Op-Eds and Blogs

It’s scandalous that economics professor Jonathan Gruber has been caught on video saying that Obamacare was pushed through Congress on the basis of a pack of lies because Gruber is rightly acknowledged as an “architect of Obamacare.” What is even more telling is how long we have known that deception was involved in the “Affordable” Care Act’s expansion of government power. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that there are now four videos on which Gruber tells insider audiences that Obamacare’s real costs were hidden from Americans who couldn’t be trusted with the truth. There’s the video where he says the “stupidity of the American voter” meant the costs had to be concealed to pass the bill. Then another emerged in which Gruber praised the way then-Sen. John Kerry figured out how to deceive voters about taxes on their insurance:

Small companies are increasingly dropping the idea of providing their employees with health insurance, the Wall Street Journal reports, and assuming that workers instead will be fine if they’re dumped onto Obamacare’s government-run “exchanges.” I told you long ago that this would happen: Employers will see the chance to save money and make their workers eligible for government subsidies. They will act accordingly. Insurers who sell coverage to small companies are now noticing the trend, the paper reports. They’re seeing faster declines in that line of business than they had expected. The Wall Street Journal explains employers’ thinking:

People with costly chronic medical conditions are getting health coverage thanks to Obamacare, the New York Times reports – but they’re finding they can barely afford the high deductibles. “Patricia Wanderlich got insurance through the Affordable Care Act this year, and with good reason: She suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2011, spending weeks in a hospital intensive care unit, and has a second, smaller aneurysm that needs monitoring. “But her new plan has a $6,000 annual deductible, meaning that Ms. Wanderlich, who works part time at a landscaping company outside Chicago, has to pay for most of her medical services up to that amount. She is skipping this year’s brain scan and hoping for the best.

The first word in the laughably misnamed “Affordable Care Act” refers to the way that Obamacare is supposed to lower the cost of health care. The president promised infamously that his plan would cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year. Instead, the average family premium was about $2,581 higher by last year than it was in 2010, the year Obamacare was enacted. Those premiums are going to go right on briskly rising, say experts. And if you don’t buy coverage on the government-run “exchanges” but still get it through your employer, you’re in for a shock in 2017 — assuming your employer can still afford to cover you, which is looking increasingly unlikely.