Menu Close

Tag: Cost of Affordable Healthcare

Employer Health Insurance: A Bargain Compared to Government-Sponsored Coverage

cosby ig logo

After years of slowing growth, employer health costs are forecast to climb at a faster pace next year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Even with that projected growth, employers are spending much less per person than is the government — about 60 percent less, concludes a new study from the American Health Policy Institute.

Encouraging the expansion of employer-sponsored insurance would therefore seem to be more cost-effective than handing out government coverage to more people. Naturally, Obamacare is choosing to follow the latter path — by inflating Medicaid’s rolls and mandating costly coverage benefits that compel companies to dump their employees in the law’s exchanges, where they can get taxpayer-subsidized insurance.

So much for President Obama’s promise that health reform would “build on what works” and “fix what’s broken.”

The AHPI study found that employers spent $3,430 on health care per person in 2012. By contrast, government programs spent $9,130.

The study makes clear that some of the spending difference is due to the fact that Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration tend to serve older, sicker, or special-needs populations.

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

CBO: It’s Not Possible to Analyze Obamacare Costs

Americans may never get an accurate projection of Obamacare’s impact on the deficit, reports the Washington Examiner.

Before it become law, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would cost $938 billion and reduce the deficit by $143 billion over the first decade, from 2010 through 2019. At that time, the figures were already questionable:

Because the major spending provisions of the Affordable Care Act (the Medicaid expansion and the exchanges subsidies) did not become effective until 2014, the CBO’s estimate really included just six years of real spending within that 10-year period.
The estimate of $143 billion in deficit reduction was a function of the law’s tax increases and Medicare spending cuts.

Read full article here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

[contact-form subject=’Website inquiry’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Company Name’ type=’text’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

Sally Pipes: State Healthcare Exchanges Show Flaws of Obamacare

Obamacare’s most loyal proponents are dropping like flies. Of the 14 states and the District of Columbia that established their own health insurance exchanges, no less than seven remain completely broken or dysfunctional. One has already been taken over by the federal government. The others may soon be.

Obamacare envisioned that states would share in the cost of the law by building and administering their own insurance exchanges — with a little federal seed money to get them started. Half a billion dollars later, the federal government is on the cusp of running exchanges in more than 40 states. Taxpayers will pay the price for these boondoggles for years to come.

Some of these exchange failures are so bad that they’ve spawned federal investigations. After flushing $248 million in federal grants down the drain, Oregon’s exchange — Cover Oregon, which was built primarily by Oracle — has yet to enroll a single person through its website. In early May, the FBI announced that state officials were being investigated for fraud. The federal Government Accountability Office has launched an investigation of its own in Oregon, too.

Read full article here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

[contact-form subject=’Website inquiry’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Company Name’ type=’text’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

D.C. Council to Vote on Broad New Tax on Insurance to Cover City’s Health Care Exchange

The District’s health exchange has a problem — a big money problem.

Like the 14 states that started online marketplaces, the District faces a year-end deadline to prove its Web site can move past technology glitches to meet the next looming challenge in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act: financial self-sufficiency.

But unlike the others, the city does not have enough customers buying insurance on its Web site to copy the funding scheme adopted by most states and the federal government: a tax of a few percentage points on premiums.

To cover its $28 million annual budget, the District’s exchange would have to levy a whopping 17 percent tax on every health plan sold on its Web site.

Read full article here.

Contact Steven Cosby with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.
[contact-form subject=’Website inquiry’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Company Name’ type=’text’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]