Slate - "The Chart That Could Save Obamacare" - Or, Death Panels II

[TomCADem]

Here is a nice story that illustrates how the MSM continues to enable the right by pushing a false equivalency between the relatively few people who are worse off under the ACA versus those who are tremendously benefitted. Rather than provide proportional coverage to those who would be better off, the MSM actually focuses on those who claim they are worse off. Yet, as this story illustrates, those who claim they are worse off often aren't.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/10/31/the_chart_that_could_save_obamacare.html

Seems right to me; it so happens that the 6 percent of humans likely to lose their plans and pay more constitute millions of Americans, and that even a small number of them can talk to the media about how horrid the experience is. What they need is a long trench warfare campaign of fact-checking and, occasionally, apologizing. Michael Hiltzik, for example, has reported out the tale of Deborah Cavallaro, a Los Angeles woman spiriting around conservative-leaning shows to explain how Obamacare killed her plan.

Her current plan, from Anthem Blue Cross, is a catastrophic coverage plan for which she pays $293 a month as an individual policyholder. It requires her to pay a deductible of $5,000 a year and limits her out-of-pocket costs to $8,500 a year. Her plan also limits her to two doctor visits a year, for which she shoulders a copay of $40 each. After that, she pays the whole cost of subsequent visits... at her age, she's eligible for a good "silver" plan for $333 a month after the subsidy -- $40 a month more than she's paying now. But the plan is much better than her current plan -- the deductible is $2,000, not $5,000. The maximum out-of-pocket expense is $6,350, not $8,500. Her co-pays would be $45 for a primary care visit and $65 for a specialty visit -- but all visits would be covered, not just two.

Is that better than her current plan? Yes, by a mile.

But cutting through the fog of the Cavallaro story took several days, and she's going to have a lot of company.

[alc]

1. 80% won't be affected until October 2014

Not all of those 80% will be affected, but many will

* employer mandate starts 2015, so employers need to decide to keep coverage of pay penalty before 2015 enrollment (oct 2014). Many will pay the penalty and employees will go to the exchange.

* just like individual policy cancellations have happened this year, group policy cancellations will come next year. My wife's company (60+ employees) has already been told that this is the last year they can keep their policy since ACA regulations won't allow it starting 2015. (It doesn't really matter if their explanation is wrong, if they are lying, if the ACA has nothing to do with it. If group policies are cancelled ACA will get blamed).


So be ready for lots of stories right before the 2014 elections. Even if it's only 1% of those 80%, there will be LOTS of hard luck stories for the media to pick up. It's likely to be much more than 1%. The "winners" will be the businesses that drop coverage while there will be many more individual and business losers than in the chart above.