Well you knew this would happen. You didn’t think that you could make your fellow man pay everyone’s way, extend health care for all, and not have to cut corners to mind cost, did you? Because if you did I have some money in a Sudanese account that I need to transfer to you, the sum of $2,978,543.02.
As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.
The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.
But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.
I feel bad for the young adults getting screwed in this, folks who are otherwise healthy, who chose to take out a catastrophic plan and pay for everything else out of pocket, keeping in the vein with how insurance is really to operate.
The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances fromPresident Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.
But companies may be able to reduce their premiums by as much as 15 percent, the insurers say, by offering the more limited plans.
“What we’re seeing is a definite uptick in interest because, quite frankly, affordability is the most pressing agenda item,” said Dr. Sam Ho, the chief medical officer for UnitedHealth’s health-care plans.
Yes, affordability, as opposed to quality care and choice for all. Now everyone can afford … mediocrity and you’re penalized with higher prices if you chose to wander off the government reservation.
*Uh oh. Apparently the IRS wasn’t told how to fund the implementation of the plan. Hey, you gotta pass it to find out what’s in it:
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates inside the IRS, highlighted the agency’s new mission in her annual report to Congress last week. Look out below. She notes that the IRS is already “greatly taxed”—pun intended?—“by the additional role it is playing in delivering social benefits and programs to the American public,” like tax credits for first-time homebuyers or purchasing electric cars. Yet with ObamaCare, the agency is now responsible for “the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history.” And without “sufficient funding” it won’t be able to discharge these new duties.
That wouldn’t be tragic, given that those new duties include audits to determine who has the insurance “as required by law” and collecting penalties from Americans who don’t. Companies that don’t sponsor health plans will also be punished. This crackdown will “involve nearly every division and function of the IRS,” Ms. Olson reports.
How the admin is getting around the unConstitutional mandate: “it’s a tax.”
