Chicago Tribune: Man, the number of ObamaCare losers really seems to be piling up, doesn't it?

Much love has evidently been lost between the Obama administration and the editors of President Obama’s hometown paper, particularly since the Chicago Tribune came out swinging against the administration’s incompetence in rolling out ObamaCare and its inherent big-government intrusion not too long ago. They’ve been getting a lot more critical of the president’s crowning legislative achievement, and their latest editorial takes issue with the “small” qualifier getting tacked on to so many of the very forced explanations coming from ObamaCare’s advocates and apologists.

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‘Yes,’ many of these supporters are now begrudgingly admitting, ‘ObamaCare’s very nature does mean that there will be an ever-so-small number of losers who may have to pay just a tiny bit more for a new plan, but it’s OK because the vast, vast majority of people are going to absolutely love their new-and-improved, more comprehensive plans!’  …Except that, as the Chicago Trib points out, that losers-list is stubbornly growing longer, with no end in sight:

Abbott Laboratories chief executive Miles White said something last Tuesday that should jolt tens of millions of Americans who watch from a comfortable distance as the giant Obamacare blimp ignites and tumbles to the ground. These Americans are safely ensconced in employer-provided health care coverage — for now.

But there are “clear incentives for companies to drop their health care plans and move people onto the exchanges,” White told analysts at a luncheon, referring to the disastrously cranky and unreliable online insurance marketplaces created under Obamacare. …

If President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders think the outcry against Obamacare is fierce now, watch if millions more Americans get blindsided with the news that they’ll be forced into these dysfunctional government online marketplaces. Some will face higher premiums or higher deductibles…

Tens of millions of people who have coverage through large American companies aren’t losers … yet. The administration granted those businesses a one-year reprieve from the Obamacare mandate to provide coverage or pay penalties. That ends for 2015, and employers are already calculating what to do. Some may cut jobs, or employees’ hours, to avoid offering costly insurance coverage. Other companies may dump everyone into the federal exchanges and pay penalties that are almost certain to be less than what coverage would cost.

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Besides the hospitals in for financial turbulence, the millions of individually insured receiving cancellation notices, and the millions insured through smaller employers whose coverage might get dropped that the Tribune also lists on the list of already explicit losers, their gist is that even people so far feeling insulated from the law because of their employer-sponsored insurance plans at larger companies could soon be in for a rude awakening about how the law is going to affect them.

If (let’s face it: not if, when) the list of ObamaCare’s losers eclipses the list of ObamaCare’s so-called “winners,” expect the building Democratic panic to really break loose.

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Jazz Shaw 8:30 AM | October 06, 2024
John Sexton 6:20 PM | October 05, 2024
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