Disaster for Dems
ObamaCare & the 2014 vote
- By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
- Last Updated: 12:09 AM, March 25, 2013
- Posted: 10:42 PM, March 24, 2013
Betsy McCaughey
Democrats hope to retake the House of Representatives in next year’s elections. They won’t — and they’ll have themselves to blame, because 2014 is when ObamaCare kicks in.
With a vengeance.
The authors of the Obama health law postponed the pain until after the 2012 election. Some popular provisions went into effect immediately, such as allowing children to stay on their parent’s plan until age 26. And the White House granted 1,472 waivers to various companies and unions, exempting them from insurance reforms so they wouldn’t drop coverage for employees and members before the presidential contest.
Yet a majority of voters on Election Day still opposed the health law (though, obviously, it wasn’t the deciding issue in the presidential race). And opinion will only sour more as the law takes full force starting in January.
People in their 20s and 30s will be clobbered — their health-insurance premiums will double (or more), insurers report. Nineteen percent of the president’s 2012 voters came from this age group. The biggest problem: The Obama law forces insurers to charge young, healthy people more to cover the cost of insuring the middle-aged and those with pre-existing conditions.
Middle-aged folks will benefit somewhat from overcharging the young, but the law’s mandatory benefits package and its billions in new taxes on insurers will drive up costs enough that overall premiums for a family of five will start at $20,000 (before subsidies, if any). Oh — and that doesn’t count the penalty for each smoker, roughly $3,000 a head.
(Subsidies may help some people cover sky-high premiums, though not the smoking penalty — but the letter of the law makes those subsidies unavailable in many states. The federal courts will eventually decide the issue.)
Many workers in industries such as retail, hospitality and home care will lose on-the-job health coverage, forecasts the ADP Research Institute — and many will also be demoted to part-time status because of ObamaCare.
Why? The president’s health law mandates that all employers with 50 or more full-time workers provide its “essential benefit package” if they offer insurance — and that package costs about twice what these industries now offer. Many employers will drop coverage, and pay the (smaller) fine; others will try to avoid that 50-employee limit by using more people part-time.
Even the government’s actuaries admit fewer people will get coverage at work after the employer mandate goes into effect than if the law had not passed.
You will find the rest of the article at this link.
I am praying Betsy McCaughey is right, as it appears the current congress cannot bring itself to even throw a speed bump in front of Obama’s health care plan from Hell. Okay, it really is not Obama’s plan, as it was written many moons ago and has been sitting in a rusty file cabinet ever since, but he will be forever associated with it.
There is just one teeny, tiny problem, though, as filling out an Obamacare application will include an opportunity to register to vote.
That could end up being a double edged sword given the low-information electorate we now have in this country.
And do not even get me started on the potential for voter fraud.
-Dave
