Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about some of the recent developments in ObamaCare. As ObamaCare quietly implodes, it is deeply impacting the cost of healthcare and health insurance in America.
The article reports:
Just over half of employees this year have a health insurance policy with a deductible of at least $1,000, according to a survey of employers from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
It’s the continuation of a multiyear trend of companies passing more of the costs of employee health care back onto workers.
Overall, health insurance premiums for a family covered by an employer health plan rose an average 3 percent this year to $18,142. Of that, employees pay an average of $5,277.
The thing we need to remember is that insurance companies are in business to make a profit. If they don’t make a profit, they won’t be in business. The percentage of profit of insurance companies is well within the range of other businesses. If you want to complain about the salaries paid to heads of insurance companies, also take a look at the salaries of other corporations–including nonprofits. You may argue that you think the salaries are out of line, but remember that stockholders make those decisions in public companies.The decisions about insurance rates are based on actuary tables which predict their cost of the coverage they provide to their policy holders. When the federal government gets involved and chooses to ignore those actuary tables, they skew the business model and things do not work the way they would in a free market.
The solution to health insurance costs is to go back to the free market. The competition will bring the price down faster than any government program. We need health insurance that goes across state lines, that follows the insured, rather than being provided by an employer, and that provides only the insurance the person being insured wants or needs–sixty-year-old grandmothers do not need pediatric dental coverage or birth control coverage. ObamaCare has been a disaster–it is time to replace it with a free market system.