Affordable Health Care Act: Not Affordable

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of Obama Care and the individual mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a fine, individuals are starting to face the sobering reality that the costs of health care and health care insurance are going to go up – way up -- instead of down.

That was the news for college student Curtis Johnson when he opened a letter from Clearwater Christian College and got the shock of his life: his student health insurance fee was going to more than double because of Obama Care.

“This law has not only raised the cost to me,” said Johnson, it’s become unbearable for many financially strapped college students… It’s a lot of money for a college kid.” Last year he paid $600 for health insurance coverage. This year it will be$1,330 – an amount he said is “becoming unaffordable.”

“Due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA – commonly known as health care reform), the cost of student health insurance has doubled,” read the letter from the college’s human resources department. “In addition, most insurance carriers are hesitant to provide contracts for this insurance due to the unpredictability of the cost of the claims.”

The situation has resulted in some colleges and universities dropping student health care plans altogether. Small businesses by the thousands will be dropping health insurance coverage for employees too. That’s because the so-called Affordable Health Care Act has rendered health care insurance unaffordable.

The reasons for that are simple:

Those who could afford to buy basic health care insurance in the past will now be essentially paying for the health care of those who could not afford to buy insurance.

Healthy people who did not need health insurance coverage in the past will not only be required to start buying it for themselves, but will now be essentially paying for the health care of unhealthy people who could not afford to pay the higher premiums necessary to cover their individual risk.

Since every item and cost of health care will now be covered by insurance, and everyone will be covered by insurance, the demand for health care products and services will skyrocket and the insurance companies will therefore be forced to charge much higher premiums. If, for example the law required people to purchase grocery insurance, the costs of groceries would go through the roof.

Since insurance companies will not be allowed to deny coverage or increase individual premiums for preexisting conditions, policy holders with no preexisting conditions will be paying the increased costs to treat those with preexisting conditions.  

The requirement that insurance companies cover children on their parent’s policies until age 26 will raise the cost of premiums for all policy holders.

All of this amounts in the end to a huge transfer of wealth from the most affluent of the population to the less affluent. As Supreme Court justice John Roberts said, it is really a tax, and the people who have the money are the people who pay the taxes.

None of this should surprise anyone. Most of the promises from the mouths of politicians about making our lives better with new legislation and new laws turn out to make our lives worse.

The Affordable Health Care Act is no different.

Under its mandate, health care for the most part will be unaffordable.