Factoid 'o the day
by digby
From Wonkblog:
Insurance premium growth has wiped out the last decade of wage growth. Overall, that middle-income family saw its income go up by $23,000, from $76,000 in 1999 to $99,000 in 2009 — not too bad. But rising health-care costs in the form of increased insurance premiums and co-pays, ate up nearly all of that. Factor in that spending, as a recent Health Affairs article did, and the average family only had $95 a month more in available income than it did a decade ago.
The ACA isn't helping, so far, but there is hope that competition within the exchanges will eventually allow people to shop for cheaper insurance and that the rebate requirement will eventually result in insurance companies being more reasonable in their rates. (Right now, it looks as though they have decided to bill their customers at high rates and keep the money during the year as a low interst loan until they are forced to give it back.) And it's also hoped that all 50 states will create regulatory agencies with some clout to beat back some of these rate increases.
There's a lot of hope in all that. If I had to guess it will probably take a couple of decades at a minimum to truly know how this has worked. The political obstacles to improvement are huge. So we shall see. But in the meantime, no more cutting back of health care benefits until we see whether this new program has made things better or worse over the long haul. I think the law of unintended consequences is going to rule for quite some time.
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