There are so many bad provisions in the Senate’s health care ”reform” legislation that it is difficult to choose which is the worst. However, because it will raise your health insurance premiums AND your taxes, a good candidate is the slacker mandate:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will require insurers to permit children to stay on family policies until age 26. This provision takes effect six months after enactment and applies to all new plans.
This provision is guaranteed to raise family insurance premiums through the roof. Requiring health insurance companies to provide government-approved coverage for any select group of patients, regardless of age, always drives up premiums.
This is true of all government-imposed coverage mandates. Many states already have such mandates, including about 20 that require insurers to provide slacker coverage. And, as I wrote last year in the American Spectator, the result is always the same:
The cumulative effect of all these state-mandated benefits is very pricey insurance. According to Victoria Bunce and JP Weiske of CAHI, ‘mandated benefits currently increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than 20% to more than 50%, depending on the state and its mandates.’
It will be no different for Reid’s slacker mandate. The provision will make health insurance even less affordable than it is now. Which brings us to another problem: By raising your insurance premiums, the slacker mandate may also make you eligible for the “Cadillac tax.”
The “Cadillac tax” will be levied on high-value (i.e. expensive) health plans, and it is a major component of the Senate “reform” bill. This new tax has been denounced by the unions, and at least one Democrat Senator has expressed serious reservations about it:
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said she’s hoping the co-called ‘Cadillac tax,’ a key financing mechanism in the Senate’s bill, will be eased in conference … “I would prefer to do something other than taxing what they call ‘Cadillac plans’ …”
I imagine that the millions of working Americans hit by the new Cadillac tax and higher health insurance premiums would also “prefer to do something other.” Thus far, however, congressional Democrats have not been terribly interested in the opinions of mere voters.
UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin has a good piece on the slacker mandate here:
I can tell you what most fiscally responsible parents are thinking when they hear the feds “taking care” of everyone else’s adult “children” for them by confiscating their tax dollars and forcing private companies to comply: You’ve got to be kidding me. Yes, Virginia, there are still some of us left who believe our children shouldn’t depend on a government-manufactured umbilical cord as they approach their third decade on earth.
Another lump of coal in your stocking.
Post a Comment