Once again for the Obama administration, lofty promises are giving way to hard reality. On September 22, 2010, in an informal discussion regarding the healthcare bill, the president contended that “as a consequence of the Affordable Care Act, premiums are going to be lower than they would be otherwise; health care costs overall are going to be lower than they would be otherwise. And that means, by the way, that the deficit is going to be lower than it would be otherwise.” That was then. Over the weekend it was revealed that MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, the chief architect of ObamaCare, backtracked on the analysis he performed two years ago. He told officials in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado the price of insurance premiums will “dramatically increase” under the reforms.
Gruber didn’t merely rebut the president’s contention. He rebutted his own, made in 2009, after he reviewed a report by the insurance industry that contended premiums would rise sharply with the passage of the healthcare bill. At that time Mr. Gruber argued that the industry report failed to take into account government subsidies provided to help moderate-income Americans purchase insurance, or administrative overhead costs he predicted would “fall enormously” once insurance polices were sold through the anticipated government-regulated marketplaces, or exchanges. “If you literally take the data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) you can see that individuals will be saving money in a nongroup market,” he said.
The CBO was less sanguine, saying it couldn’t forecast what would happen to premiums because “so many uncertain variables come into play.”
Some of the so-called variables surrounding Obamacare have already come into play. First and foremost were the waivers to the plan, issued by an administration with a track record of doing favors for certain constituencies. The actual number of waivers granted remains in question. The Hill claims that as of January, 1,231 companies had received waivers from the plan. ABC News had the number at 1,471 in July of 2011.
Regardless, Republicans contended that the waivers were either politically inspired or represented a fundamental flaw with the legislation. “I think it is an understatement to say that these waivers have been controversial,” said Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, during an interview in March of 2011.
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