Bluegrass Beacon: Read the side of Obamacare's box

BluegrassBeaconLogo

Like food makers claiming “fat free” on the front of the box only to have a close reading of the ingredients on the side of that same box reveal a product packed with unhealthy, unpronounceable names of chemical toxins, Obamacare’s cheerleaders gush forth superficial claims about the reform policy’s success.

For instance, supporters in Kentucky and nationwide slapped a label in big letters on the front of Obamacare claiming “dramatic drop in the number of uninsured” while on the side of the box you discover a product packed with unsavory ingredients like “misleading claims.”

Just days before a recent government report forecasting a 25-percent increase in premiums in the 39 states that use HealthCare.gov, the federal Obamacare exchange which Kentucky joins on Nov. 1, President Obama proudly claimed to college students in Florida that “another 20 million Americans would know the financial security of health insurance” because of his reforms.

We’ve heard similar claims in Kentucky, where proponents allege the commonwealth’s Obamacare-induced programs reduced by a half-million the ranks of the uninsured.

Yet 80 percent of Obamacare’s enrollees in Kentucky were dumped into Medicaid, which is, as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted, “a failing program that provides substandard care.”

Nationally, 97 percent, or nearly 9 million of the 9.25 million newly insured who enrolled for coverage using the federal platform or one of the state Obamacare exchanges, wound up in the government-run Medicaid program.

Obama says states shouldn’t worry about future costs of such dramatic increases in Medicaid enrollment, because, after all, “the federal government is paying for it.”

Yet states will be required to start picking up a significant portion of the bill delivered by their expanded Medicaid populations next year.

How does Obama expect Kentucky with its worst-in-the-nation pension crisis to pay for an additional 400,000 Medicaid enrollees?

Does the federal government have a special printing press somewhere designed to spit out special Benjamins just to pay for this failed experiment in government-run health insurance?

Besides, have you checked your pay stub?

If you see “SWT” and “FIT,” it means that not only have you been paying for your state’s Medicaid program and its expansion -- which, in Kentucky’s case, was $1.8 billion higher than expected during its first 18 months in 2014 and 2015 -- but guess who antes up when “the federal government is going to pay for most of it?

”Yep. That would be you, too.

Another reason for Obamacare’s implosion is its attempt to impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory and pricing scheme on both insurers and their customers.

Forcing men to pay for maternity coverage and denying healthy young people the opportunity to purchase a higher-risk, lower-cost plan isn’t exactly motiving millennials to sign up.

While these young adults may have flocked to former presidential contender Bernie Sanders while he was holding court during this year’s primary campaign to extol the virtues of forced sharing and the vices of liberty and profit, they’re not biting when it comes to surrendering their money and personal liberty to Obamacare and its mandates forcing insurers to charge younger, healthier people higher rates to pay for older, sicker patients.

While it would be difficult to find a more Sanders-like program than Obamacare, 18-to-34-year-olds are reading the side of the box where they find “likely failure” among the ingredients and are choosing instead to forego the higher rates and pay the fines instead.

In fact, this demographic group purchases only about a quarter of the Obamacare plans when actuaries say 40 percent is required to offset the costs incurred by older, sicker workers.

Insurers, unable to keep carrying such significant losses, are fleeing the Obamacare exchanges faster than Aroldis Chapman’s fastball, leaving customers with fewer choices and even-higher costs.

Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute; Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com. Read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.