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Obamacare: No Free Lunches | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary
Take, for example, Obamacare. The president loves to cite the fact that college students are now able to stay on their parents policies until age 26. This has undoubtedly made it easier for some students to get or keep insurance coverage. But the additional coverage is not free. In fact, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, the cost of continuing coverage from 18 to 26 could run as high as $3,400 per child per year. Much of that additional cost is passed back to companies that provide insurance coverage to dependents of their employees.
Politicians often act as though government programs are cost free.
The predictable result: Companies are dropping dependent coverage altogether. Among them is one of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York, SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, which is now dropping dependent coverage for 30,000 workers. Ironically, the fund had previously covered nearly 6,000 workers children, some up to age 23. Those students, along with other spouses and children, are now out of luck.
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For example, Lenoir-Rhyne University of Hickory, N.C., the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, are all dropping school-sponsored plans starting in the fall. The colleges said that Obamacares regulations would have driven up students premiums tenfold. And, Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kan., was forced to raise the premium on the plan it offered students from $445 to more than $2,000 to pay for the new level of coverage required by the health-care law.
The Obama administrations requirement that insurance include contraceptive coverage is also causing Catholic universities to drop student coverage. Already, Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, and Ave Maria University in Florida have recently dropped their student plans.
The president is not going to be talking about those students who have lost their health insurance because of his policies.
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Nor should we forget that across the country there are people who are not being hired or, worse, are being laid off, because employers cannot afford the cost of insurance, especially since Obamacare has not only failed to curb rising insurance costs, it has already added 23 percent to premium prices. These unemployed workers are more of the unseen victims of Obamacare.
They should have read it before they passed it. Oh, well, they INTENDED well, and that's all that matters.
Right, USMB lefties?
Still waiting for a viable healthcare solution from conservatives
Other than replace Obamacare with WeDontCare