By: Brian Sikma
A study commissioned last year by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services paints a grim picture for employers and individuals already facing high health insurance costs. Jonathan Gruber, an MIT professor sometimes called an architect of ObamaCare due to the key role he played in advising the Obama Administration on the law’s creation, conducted the study in July of 2011. The numbers he presents are not optimistic.
Overall, Wisconsinites can expect healthcare costs to rise, though subsidies from the federal government may lessen the immediate impact of those higher costs. Just over 41% of Wisconsinites will see a premium increase of 50% or more, and the average Wisconsin health insurance consumer will see their premiums jump 30%.
Despite being couched as an affordable way to solve the problem of rising healthcare costs, ObamaCare as a sweeping reform is poised to create financial headaches for the federal government, the states, and healthcare consumers. Instead of allowing competing actors to devise better solutions and cost effective remedies, the federal reform imposes a one-size-fits-all approach that further increases the distance between patients, doctors, and those paying for the treatment and care.
Key to the next phase of ObamaCare implementation is the creation of insurance exchanges in each state. Euphemistically dubbed a “marketplace” the exchange will be a system set up and managed at either state or federal expense and run in complete compliance with federal Health and Human Services interpretations of ObamaCare. Initially, the Obama Administration indicated to states that if they set up and ran the federally-mandate exchange they would be given significant control over the way it was run. Experts now say that is not the case.
“The final word for all decisions within the exchanges, whether created by the states or the federal government, is in Washington,” writes Benjamin Domenech of The Heartland Institute. Domenech notes that many state governors appear to be leaning towards making Washington set up the health insurance exchanges instead of allowing their states to shoulder the cost of a project that will only be made to completely comply with Obama Administration dictates.