In the conservative echo chamber, there is little doubt about Obamacare: It’s an unmitigated, costly disaster. In the real world, there is a fascinating, high-stakes question that still needs answering: How well will this restructuring of the health-care industry, workable in theory, operate in reality?
Opponents of health-care reform protest outside the Supreme Court last year. (Charles Dharapak/Associated Press)
We won’t have a full picture for a long time. But, as the nation prepares for the phase-in of the law’s most important elements next month, we are starting to get real data back. And at least one major criticism — that the law will require people without employer-sponsored insurance to buy very expensive health-care coverage — looks increasingly weak.
A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation offers the clearest picture yet of how much different sorts of Americans will have to pay for their coverage in the “exchanges” the government is setting up for individual insurance customers. Bottom-line costs will vary, as they do now, depending on where you live, your income, your age and other factors. But, “while premiums will vary significantly across the country,” the report concludes, “they are generally lower than expected.”
For example, we estimate that the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office imply that the premium for a 40-year-old in the second lowest cost silver plan would average $320 per month nationally. Fifteen of the eighteen rating areas we examined have premiums below this level, suggesting that the cost of coverage for consumers and the federal budgetary cost for tax credits will be lower than anticipated.
Via: Washington Post
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