Bernie Sanders To Introduce Single-Payer Healthcare Bill In September
For a couple of years now we've highlighted various data points suggesting that Obamacare was, and continues to be, in an inescapable death spiral that will end in a spectacular collapse of healthcare exchanges around the country. While there are a number of reasons that Obamacare was doomed from the start, it basically all boils down to the original failed logic that millions of young, healthy Americans would gladly pay out the nose for a product they didn't want and knew they would never use all to fulfill a civic obligation to subsidize the healthcare costs of their older and/or less fortunate neighbors.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, most Americans simply aren't wired that way.
In fact, as we pointed last week, a study from Mark Farrah and Associates found that the "off-exchange market" (i.e. people who make too much money to quality for subsidies and whose premiums are required to subsidize everyone else who does qualify) contracted by 2.1mm in 2016, or a 29% drop. With those kind of declines, it's only a matter of time until there are no more rich fools in the pool willing to continue subsidizing a broken system.
Also, MFA published the same report in 2016, facilitating a year-over-year comparison. The on-exchange market fell from 12,681,874 to 12,216,003 individuals, a reduction of 465,871 or 4 percent. However, the off-exchange market fell from 7,520,939 to 5,361,451, a reduction of 2,159,488 or 29 percent. In other words, enrollment is steady among those who receive subsidies but declining dramatically among those who do not. Much has been made of the question of whether the individual markets are in a “death spiral.” Given that the on-exchange market enrollment is relatively stable, there is clearly not a death spiral in the subsidized market. However, with a reduction in the unsubsidized market of 29 percent in just one year, that pattern certainly looks like one we would expect in a market spiraling down.
Editor's Note by @trending: I believe Bernie has good intentions, but as was revealed during the Democratic primaries, there is no "good plan" for providing health care to every American without piling substantial costs on people, who, you know...work.
As it is, Obamacare actively subsidizes people who have lower income...the less you earn, the less you have to pay in health insurance, to a point where it costs almost nothing if you make nothing. If you're in the middle class, you pay full price...$100's, even $1,000's per month. But with Bernie's plan, you can be sure that "the rich"...the middle class and upper class...will bear the entire brunt of the costs and lower the standard of care for all.
Americans need a change, but Bernie proved during the primaries that he doesn't have a real plan that can deliver the goods he's promising. (Yes, the primaries were rigged, but...he still floundered when pressed on this point by Hillary.)
Article by Zero Hedge.
Commentary and editing by @trending.