Sarah Kliff, formerly of the Washington Post and currently of Vox.com (Ezra Klein\’s new internet baby) has, for years, championed ObamaCare.
But now she allows as there might be a bit of a problem with the state exchanges. Actually, maybe a huge one.
Excerpted from Ms. Kliff\’s latest blog:
Morethan a dozen states decided to build new health insurancemarketplaces under Obamacare. Now, they need to figure out how to paythe costs of running those massive websites.
TheAffordable Care Act provided federal grant funding for states to gettheir new web portals up and running. The Obama administrationdoled out $4.6billion in grants to states launching their own marketplaces.
ButObamacare also requires state exchanges to become self-sustaining bythe start of 2015. That means every state exchange that will operatenext year now needs to figure out how to pay their bills. Everymarketplace needs to be able to pay staff (which sometimes number inthe hundreds), maintain office space and continue running outreachcampaigns to increase the insurance rate.
“Therewon\’t be any big pot of federal money,” says ElizabethCarpenter, a director at health research firm Avalere. “When youthink about being able to run an exchange without the federalbackstop, it will take awhile to forecast and figure out what moneyis needed.”
Translation: the states got sucked in, and now most – maybe all – will need to fold right into the national exchange.
This means centralized – socialized? – medicine: exactly what ObamaCare\’s detractors have, correctly, said all along.
It also means that, in short order, those same nice bureaucrats in Washington DC who are responsible for keeping our veterans so happy with the quality of their health care, will be in charge of everyone else\’s too. Isn\’t that comforting?
I hope for Sarah Kliff\’s sake she doesn\’t have to rely on ObamaCare for her health needs.
Oh, one other thing: Here is a little “card” Ms. Kliff appended to this blog, in an effort to explain what a wonderful system ObamaCare is. See if you find a bit of a problem within it:
Howmuch does Obamacare cost the government?
Forthe federal government, Obamacare\’s hefty tax increases and Medicarecuts means the law, as a whole, actually saves money – at leastaccording to the Congressional Budget Office.
TheCongressional Budget Office estimates that Obamacare will save $109billion over the next decade. Expanding health coverage tomillions of Americans is expensive; it will cost more than $1trillion over the next decade. But Obamacare includes a whole slew ofnew taxes and cuts to doctor payments that will, if all goes asbudget forecasters expect, more than cover those costs.
Wonderful! The CBO says ObamaCare will save us $10.9 billion dollars a year for the next decade. And all the government has to do is:
-Add “a whole slew of new taxes”. This, of course, means people who actually pay taxes will get nailed for the difference while people who don\’t (over half the country now) will just something else for free,
– Cut doctor payments. But who cares about that? So what if doctors will leave ObamaCare in droves because it won\’t be financially feasible for them to participate? What does that have to do with quality health care anyway?
ObamaCare is an unworkable monstrosity. The general public has always known this.
Maybe someday the Kliffs of the world will too.
