As we lumber into a new year, HHS is touting its enrollment numbers.
(Is it me or does this administration love dropping news over holidays? You ever get the feeling they're trying to slip one past us?)
While most news outlets took Burwell's bait and simply echoed her proclamation that more than 7 million people have signed up for health care through the exchanges, few focused on just how many of them are getting that health care at greatly reduced costs because of the taxpayer-funded subsidies.
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And that's the real story here. According to the latest data from the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly nine out of 10 enrollees used subsidies to help buy their coverage.
"We're pleased that nationwide, millions of people signed up for Marketplace coverage starting Jan. 1. The vast majority were able to lower their costs even further by getting tax credits, making a difference in the bottom lines of so many families," HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell declared as she announced the latest round of numbers.
Burwell sounds proud. Not about how many people have signed up, necessarily, but about how many of those enrollees are having their premiums (or at least part of them) paid by the rest of us. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, but it's certainly startling.
As I've said before — and I'm not alone in the wilderness on this — this kind of mass federal subsidization of health insurance is simply unsustainable.
How many of those of those millions do you think would have still signed up for health insurance without subsidies? Half? Not even.
And how many of those subsidy winners think that premium assistance is going to last forever? Or, like most workers who get their health through their employer, they only see the price as what they have to pay personally?
Listen, don't get me wrong, I think it's great we're expanding health care coverage in this country. Our rate of uninsureds is something of an international embarrassment — even if it is at an all-time low. But we're spawning a generation of newly insured people who have no idea what they're buying, how much it really costs and who's actually footing the bill. We're making a potentially disastrous problem worse.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. It's every new PPACA enrollee.
Of course, the math is compounded by the fact that only about a third of those enrollees are under 35. I'm no actuary, but I know how insurance works, and that's a financial meltdown waiting to happen.
Once carriers start taking baths on claims, we're going to find out just how much they support this law. That's assuming, of course, that the risk corridor (or bail out) fund doesn't dry up.
And then we'll find out if Jeb, Hillary or whoever our next president is thinks carriers are worth bailing out of a financial sinkhole like automakers and banks.
And I don't know about you, but bailouts are one old acquaintance I'd like to forget.
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