Saturday, November 15, 2014

Five Ways Obamacare Hides Its Costs

"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass."
That was MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the key architects of ObamaCare, explaining how ObamaCare was purposefully designed to obfuscate how it was financed, how the subsidies worked and other unpleasant features of the law.
"If you made it explicit that healthy people were going to pay and sick people get money, it would not have passed," Gruber said, adding that the bill "was written in a tortured way to make sure the (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as a tax."
Gruber's comments, made at a 2013 conference but just now making the rounds on the Internet, are the polar opposite of what Democrats promised the public.
At a 2010 White House summit held shortly before ObamaCare became law, then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., explained that a central goal of ObamaCare was to make the entire system more transparent. 
"An open, transparent market will bring down costs, we believe," he said.
Obama himself frequently talked about the problem of hidden health costs, and administration officials promised, "Price transparency will be an important part of our efforts to reform health care."
More than four years after Obama signed ObamaCare into law, it's become increasingly clear that Gruber wasn't exaggerating. The law's vast web of accounting gimmicks, cross subsidies, taxes and fees makes it increasingly difficult to know what ObamaCare costs of care from consumers, businesses and taxpayers.
Hidden Premiums
Healthcare.gov and the other exchanges were originally supposed to open in October, but the White House pushed the date back a month. The administration said that it would give insurers more time to figure out next year's rates, but critics said that the administration meant the delay to hide ObamaCare's 2015 premiums until after the midterm elections.
Shoppers could get a peek at rates for the first time this week.
Another complication is that those who automatically re-enroll in their health plans could be in for a rude surprise. Not only could premiums be far higher than before, but subsidies — which depend on both income and plan prices — could be smaller.
Enrollees will be able to find out only by reapplying for coverage through the exchanges, something that more than half of enrollees say that they don't plan to do, according to a Bankrate survey.
Hidden Plan Costs
Far from making insurance costs more transparent, ObamaCare appears to be making it more difficult to assess the true cost of any insurance plan.
To keep premiums down, for example, many plans adopted narrow provider networks, forcing patients either to go to the short list of approved doctors and hospitals, or to pay out of pocket.
A McKinsey survey found that the share of individual market plans with narrow networks jumped from 20% before ObamaCare went into effect to 41% this year, with 15% now using "ultranarrow" networks.
The survey also found that close to 70% of the lowest-cost plans sharply restricted provider networks. The restrictions could expose consumers to significant costs.
And to make up for ObamaCare plans' low payment rates, some providers are starting to tack on extra charges not covered by insurance, while others are refusing to take ObamaCare patients at all. Both add new, hidden costs to health care.
Read the other 3 ways HERE.

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