The Nutter Response to Low Obamacare Rates
The right wing hornet's nest was royally poked by the fact that under the state exchanges, rates for coverage are coming well under previously published estimates. The first major response was this hack piece by a Forbes blogger:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/05/30/rate-shock-in-california-obamacare-to-increase-individual-insurance-premiums-by-64-146/
The thrust of his argument is that some of the teaser rates for catastrophic care quoted on ehealthinsurance.com are lower than the published rates for those quoted for the California "bronze plan" under Obamacare. So this proves it! The rates are skyrocketing under Obamacare! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Except, they aren't. And it isn't.
The article steadfastly refuses to discuss the comparative benefits of the plans it is looking at. First of all, that impressive $92/month rate is available to almost nobody. When they find out you had a hangnail in second grade, guess what suckers you get the $125/mo plan - and that will go to $150 six months later (ask me how I know). Second of all, it is only available to healthy people, if you are sick of course you can't get insured at all. Third, there is a lifetime maximum that somewhat defeats the purpose of *catastrophic care.* Fourth, it doesn't pay for preventative care, or just about anything else.
Whereas the Obamacare bronze plan pays for preventative care, doesn't exclude anybody, has no lifetime cap, pays for three doctor visits per year, has reasonable copays for a host of things that the non-Obamacare plan makes you pay out of pocket for. And this journalist has the audacity to use the term"comparable coverage."
This author's analysis is like going to a Hyundai dealership and asking for a quote on its least expensive sedan, and then going to a Lexus dealership to do the same, and then conclude that the Lexus is a bad value because it's more expensive than the Hyundai. And then there's the irony that the author makes a big noise about calling it an apples-to-apples comparison!
It almost goes without saying that any discussion of the larger benefits of have 25 million Americans finally be able to afford to get health care is left completely out of the equation.
Not surprisingly, this article was immediately being picked up by all of the usual suspects in the echo chamber - Fox, Breitbart, IBD, Cato, et al. They're just quoting it verbatim and not even asking the most basic questions, or even making a token display of due diligence.
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