Campus Discussion: Obamacare Likely to Fail

E-mail from a grad student on Obamacare class discussions:

We had a class discussion about why Obamacare is likely to fail. The professor is a major lib but he is not enthusiastic about Obamacare one bit. That is mostly due to the fact he would rather have a more radical “efficient” single-payer system but nonetheless he rarely has any nice things to say about it.

One valid point he made is how essential getting young people on board with Obamacare is to its success. If they can’t get the young people on board to pay the higher prices and subsidize the healthcare costs of the older population, the whole plan will be an epic failure.

His point was that even if they get the websites up and working by the January deadline, Obamacare may be dead on arrival because young people (at least for the foreseeable future) would rather pay the penalty fee than buy the insurance, most of which is outrageously priced. If young people “couldn’t afford to be insured” before O-care, how can they be expected to afford it now? Especially since employers are by-and-large cutting employee hours because of crippling costs to insure them all…

Anyhow, there is an interesting article that talks about this on Human Events: http://www.humanevents.com/2013/10/08/healthy-young-key-to-obamacare-arent-buying-it/

This is a “sleeping giant” that hasn’t gotten as much attention because of the shutdown but is sure to explode at some point.

Another looming problem that is creeping out of the woodwork is the fact that they are unable to calculate subsidy eligibility. There are some “calculators” floating around on the internet to estimate the cost but the govt. itself can’t tell you how much subsidy you qualify for until the deadline actually gets here. HUGE problem considering this was one of the big pitches of Obamacare…the poorest people who would qualify hypothetically for those subsidies to purchase healthcare coverage won’t even know how much it will actually cost them until the bill comes.

So I guess the big point is, even if they succeed in getting a one-year delay on the individual mandate, it is likely that Obamacare will implode on its own.  This is obviously both good and bad – depends on the extent of the damage to the economy by that point, also depends on what the proposed “next step” is…. far left may use it as an argument for a “more efficient single-payer system” (like my professor). I am not sure how well that would succeed, though stranger things have happened…