Trump Care aka Obama Care Part Deux!

The new Trumpacare program embeded within the tax bill gives all the “benefits” of Obamacare (O care) with higher costs to you and I...rejoice in your new freedom! The issue has been that the O care program was based on a large pool. Now if O had done the right thing and created a single pool and shopped THAT pool around the size of the pool could have brought down the costs. But the administration instead allowed each state to create its own market thus ruining the risk pool. Basically the bigger the pool the lower the costs, even if the group is sicker than average. The current situation is just poor policy design. It’s why having a national option like the VA available would have been a better policy. No you wouldn't have to join it. You could stay at your employers plan or go without. But with a set annual enrollment to avoid people who get sick joining when they get sick. This could have made the program cheaper. Basically O care is a pay off to the insurance industry that worked out for them. Concept is very similar to the GOP tax cut. Basically industry wins, shareholders win, and the common guy gets the shaft.

The irony is among the worker bees most premiums went up because corporate America switched to high deductible plans. Most folks chose gold or above and they get killed year over year. Ironically, my premiums have gone down every year. Why? Because I chose a shitty silver plan. The difference is that the deductible is crazy high so no one uses it. As a result the cost of the pool is cheaper. This sucks for me because basically, despite having several major issues, I pay for everything out of pocket, which I would with a Gold plan as well. But this default catastrophic plan is cheaper. That was the point of the policy. Too many young adults were going without healthcare. We’ve all had to endure a young adult walking up at urgent care, declaring no insurance, and getting served. Sometimes before you the paying patron because they triage higher. This cost was born by the hospitals and passed along to the carriers who in turned passed them onto the payer. Under O care these costs are now fully borne across the risk pools and this limits the losses from insurers. The point of this policy was never to benefit YOU. The point was to reduce the uninsured population and to force younger people to have skin in the game in their medical usage. It also was meant to financially stabilize the insurance carriers and hospitals by promoting competition. This is what CONGRESS intended and it worked because overall costs have come down and earnings have gone up. Unfortunately this was done by people not going to the doctor. The industry knew they had 5 years to benefit. After that they needed you to go to the doctor or else earnings would begin to tank....we are at 5 years....this has nothing to do with the GOP giving you freedom but...you guessed it corporate earnings.

So what is funny with O care is many employers use high deductible plans. This drives the cost of insurance down because if you don't use it costs to the employer go down! Ironically the GOP by making insurance optional again have only made matters worse for policy holders. Healthy people will leave their plans (and go back to mooching off the insured) which will increase the risk within the remaining pool which drives up the premiums with worse coverage overall at higher costs. Thanks Donnie!!