Well, one thing’s for sure. From this Wall Street Journal editorial we can reasonably infer that the editors of the WSJ don’t care much for the PPACA. If you can take their figures at face value, the PPACA’s prospects don’t look particularly good:
As Exhibit A, note that participation on the federal and state insurance exchanges is badly trailing the original projections and declining over time. About 11.7 million people joined ObamaCare during the open sign-up period last year. But enrollment this summer slipped 15% to 9.9 million with “effectuated†coverage, meaning enrollees who were up to date on their nominal share of the premium after subsidies.
and I concur with their observation that it will be difficult for the PPACA to reach the CBO’s projected goals:
Some churn is inevitable, but the Congressional Budget Office estimated two years ago that some 13 million would participate in 2015, and its most recent revision in March of this year still pegged the figure at 11 million. The CBO nonetheless now projects ObamaCare will more than double in size in 2016 to 21 million, and such a growth spurt is probably necessary to stabilize the insurance markets.
especially considering that as of this year funds for outreach are drying up. IMO that was one of the many defects in the PPACA’s architecture. A reasonable assumption is that you get the low-hanging fruit first, i.e. it will be increasingly difficult to get higher participation over time. Releasing most of the money ear-marked for encouraging people to sign up for healthcare insurance in the earliest years of the plan may have goosed the initial numbers a bit but at best it was a qualified success. Now what? If spending hundreds of millions trying to talk reluctant people into enrolling didn’t accomplish the task, how successful will spending less be?
But this is actually pretty distressing:
In a new working paper, Wharton economists Mark Pauly, Adam Levine and Scott Harrington estimate how much better or worse off the non-poor uninsured are under ObamaCare. They measure the cost of the plans, the benefits of consuming pre-paid medical care and out-of-pocket payments without obtaining coverage. They conclude that, “even under the most optimistic assumptions,†half of the formerly uninsured take on both a higher financial burden and lower welfare, and on net “average welfare for the uninsured population would be estimated to decline after the ACA if all members of that population obtained coverage.â€
In other words, ObamaCare harms the people it is supposed to help.
The editorial continues by cataloguing the failures of the insurance co-ops.
As I’ve been saying since before 2009, the challenge we face is in decreasing what we spend for healthcare while maintaining a reasonable level of public health. The prospects for doing that using the strategies of the PPACA were dubious enough. The prospects for accomplishing that task with the notionally market-based reforms as, for example, in Jeb Bush’s recently outlined replacement plan are non-existent.
Supporters of the PPACA have contended that the plan was the first step in reforming our healthcare system. I have believed that history will record it as a well-intended misstep.
I can’t get to the Pauly paper and I am loathe to accept an interpretation by the WSJ. For most people, buying insurance is not that good a deal. It only becomes a good deal when you need to use it, and you hope you never need to use it. So, I would really want to see what Pauly actually said.
Steve
This was a draft bill that was passed by the barest majority using a 50+1 political strategy by politicians who didn’t read it much less have any idea of its future implications and effects.
I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going to actually happen in the future.
“For most people, buying insurance is not that good a deal. It only becomes a good deal when you need to use it, and you hope you never need to use it.”
“Oh yeah!? Well I didn’t want that damned insurance program anyway.”
As Don Imus would say, “you can’t make this shit up.”
” I have believed that history will record it as a well-intended misstep.”
If it’s not a revisionist type of history, I believe the PPACA will be viewed as a deeply flawed, inaccurately portrayed, partisan-induced piece of legislation.
Like so many of the social progressive’s rose-colored glasses programs, they “sound” better than they fare in real time.
OT, but still relating to the programming minefield of most social progressive politicians:
I was listening to the dem debate the other night, and was discouraged to hear how devoid of details/facts the candidates were in their general analysis of “costs” associated with the litany of giveaway programs exulted from their given podiums.
In one hand they were gleefully tossing promises to the crowd like candy, to every constituency in their playbooks. And then, switching tunes, with furrowed brows and clinched fists, they angrily threatened more government controls ranging from guns, climate, wages, selection of which lives mattered most etc. It was a masterpiece of far left, bloodcurdling rhetoric — something I haven’t witnessed on a presidential candidate stage for a long time, if ever.