Yes, President Obama faces a major political problem explaining his promise, now proven false, that if Americans like their current health coverage, they can keep it. But beginning next year, as Obamacare truly becomes a fact of American life, the president may have an even bigger problem: reconciling his pledge to make the health care system "better for everybody" on the one hand, with the redistributive nature of Obamacare on the other.
Obama often promised that his national health care scheme would benefit all. "What we will do is make insurance work better for everybody," he told the Congressional Black Caucus at a dinner in September 2009, as lawmakers were considering what would become the Affordable Care Act. A couple of months earlier, Obama told CBS his proposal would "make the system work better for everybody." Two years later, in 2011, Obama promised the law "will save everybody money."
It won't. And it's becoming clearer by the day that Obamacare will reward some Americans and punish others.
Individuals and families at or near the poverty line will receive substantial subsidies under Obamacare. But those whose income is around the median for their family size will receive far less, perhaps not enough to make up for higher costs of new coverage. And those whose income is a bit above the median could receive no subsidy at all.
If the cost of coverage goes up a lot, those people will be squeezed hard. "While lower-income people could see lower costs because of government subsidies," the Associated Press reported Sunday, "many in the middle class may get rude awakenings when they access the websites and realize they'll have to pay significantly more."
Right now, that's happening only to people — a relatively small segment of the population, but still big enough to number in the millions — who purchase insurance through the individual market. But if some in the vastly larger group who have coverage through their jobs also begin to lose coverage, many, many millions of Americans will get the message that Obamacare is not for them. It could happen; certainly the law contains incentives for employers to cancel coverage and send employees to the Obamacare exchanges.
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