There is a masterstroke hidden inside the Affordable Care Act that will ensure not only the rapid move to a single-payer system, but also the full government takeover of the medical industry.
Articles: ObamaCare's Looming Land Mine
The article ignores the fact that medical bankruptcies have been a problem for a long time, and does not study whether medical bankruptcies will rise or fall under ObamaCare.
Massachusetts if the father of ObamaCare. But in Massachusetts, the Bronze Plan is even worse than the one for ObamaCare. The government's cost share is smaller there.
So let's do a more objective examination than the highly biased American Thinker:
The percentage of personal bankruptcies linked to medical bills or illness changed little, and the absolute number actually increased in Massachusetts after the implementation of its landmark 2006 law requiring people to buy health insurance, a Harvard study says.
The new study, which appears in todayÂ’s American Journal of Medicine, found that between early 2007 and mid-2009, the share of all Massachusetts bankruptcies with a medical cause went from 59.3 percent to 52.9 percent, a non-significant decrease of 6.4 percentage points. Because there was a sharp rise in total bankruptcies during that period, the actual number of medical bankruptcy filings in the state rose from 7,504 in 2007 to 10,093 in 2009.
The findings have national implications because the Obama administrationÂ’s health law is largely patterned after the Massachusetts plan, including its individual mandate. One of the administrationÂ’s arguments in support of the new federal law was that it would significantly reduce medical bankruptcies nationwide. The findings in Massachusetts cast doubt on that claim.
In short, ObamaCare will not reduce the number of medical bankruptcies. It was claimed during the debates prior to its enactment that it would reduce them.
To explain why medical bankruptcies persist in Massachusetts, the authors of the new study write: “Health costs in the state have risen sharply since reform was enacted. Even before the changes in health care laws, most medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts – as in other states – afflicted middle-class families with health insurance. High premium costs and gaps in coverage – co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services – often left insured families liable for substantial out-of-pocket costs. None of that changed. For example, under Massachusetts’ reform, the least expensive individual coverage available to a 56-year-old Bostonian carries a premium of $5,616, a deductible of $2,000, and covers only 80 percent of the next $15,000 in costs for covered services.”
Another claim used to justify passing ObamaCare goes down in flames.
