It looks like health care “reform” will pass.
Nick Gillespie asks: How Many Americans Will Choose to be Uninsured Even if Insurance is Mandatory?
This problem is MUCH worse than it seems at first glance.
Since there’s no PEC (pre-existing condition) denial anymore, you aren’t buying insurance, you’re buying the right to exchange your medical bills for premiums. As a rational actor you would of course only do this when the latter became greater than the former.
This means more and more healthy people will drop out of insurance, buffered only by the stickiness in the fact that employers provide a lot of coverage and don’t usually offer cash equivalents (yet) and the fines (which are tiny).
Premiums will skyrocket as fewer people are paying in more than they take out. Some rational employers will respond by offering employees cash and telling them “Hey, if you’re healthy, why not take cash? It’s not like you can be denied coverage!” More people will drop off, and premiums will go even higher. Rinse and repeat.
It’s hard to see a good end to this…
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The estimable McArdle makes the mistake of assuming that this will hurt the Democrats because the party’s most loyal voters don’t like the bill. I find this odd after watching the last 8 years of solid conservatives expressing constant disgust and dismay at Bush and the Republican congress only to dutifully line up to vote Republican anyway.
In truth, what the party leadership’s been concentrating on, like a laser, has been actually mustering the votes to pass this, while outside the caterwauling from talk radio, public protests, etc. were or less ignored or answered by flunkies. The leadership has put all its energy into PASSING this, and passing it so that they have enough time between now and election time to SELL THE BILL TO THE PUBLIC.
It would have been insane to divert crucial energy into fighting the talk radio/tea party people, most of whom would never vote Democrat anyway. Furthermore, they’d look schizophrenic if they started touting the benefits of legislation to the general public before they knew what its final form would be!
By passing this now, they have the better part of a year between now and election day to actually start selling this to the voters. And to move on other items. I predict you will soon see the benefits of this package being pushed, admissions that it’s imperfect but with plans to improve it over time, and major pushback against all the negative publicity. They’re going to be able to go back to the currently-surly parts of their base and say, “look, this isn’t everything you wanted, but here’s all the things you DID want that you DID get, this is historic!”
And I predict it now: within a week or two, tops, we’re going to start seeing a lot of this from lefties and Democratic Party loyalists saying this:
“Well now that it’s passed, I’ve had time to think about it and I’m starting to think it’s not that bad.”
Watch. Democrats are not going to face an angry base at all. And they likely won’t face a centrist population furious with them over this either; the general public won’t hate this that quickly, even if it is as bad as the right says it is (and it probably isn’t).
Uh huh. I look forward to seeing poor people hauled off to jail for not buying insurance. That should poll well.
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