How Obamacare Will Lead To Less Coverage; Higher Costs

More and more evidence continues to flow in that demonstrates just how bad the Administration's plans for government run healthcare will be for Americans.

Writing in today's Washington Post, Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University, president emeritus of the nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research, and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984, writes that the Administration plan could "have the unintended consequence of raising health insurance premiums and causing a decline in the number of people with insurance":

A key feature of the House and Senate health bills would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with preexisting conditions. The new coverage would start immediately, and the premium could not reflect the individual's health condition. This well-intentioned feature would provide a strong incentive for someone who is healthy to drop his or her health insurance, saving the substantial premium costs. After all, if serious illness hit this person or a family member, he could immediately obtain coverage. As healthy individuals decline coverage in this way, insurance companies would come to have a sicker population. The higher cost of insuring that group would force insurers to raise their premiums. (Separate accident policies might develop to deal with the risk of high-cost care after accidents when there is insufficient time to buy insurance.)

The higher premium level would cause others who are currently insured to drop coverage, pushing premiums even higher. The result would be a spiral of rising premiums and shrinking numbers of insured.

He goes on to explain how the taxes levied on people who do not purchase insurance will provide insufficient incentive to prevent this from occuring, and how ultimatly this will evolve to the dreaded "public option" , irrespective of whether it is in the initial bill or not, accompanied with higher taxes, higher spending, and worse coverage for all.

Well worth a read.

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