It’s as if people think these premiums are paid for by money that grows on trees.
This is a massive transfer of wealth. Subsidies are just simply that.
This is not free money in any sense of the word. The question is: why should I have to pay for your premiums and my premiums? Via the AP:
Premiums for a popular type of individual health plan would rise sharply, and more people would be left with no insurance options if President Donald Trump makes good on his threat to stop “Obamacare” payments to insurers, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.
The nonpartisan number crunchers also estimated that cutting off payments that now reduce copays and deductibles for people of modest incomes would add $194 billion to federal deficits over a decade. That head-scratching outcome is because a different Affordable Care Act subsidy would automatically increase as premiums jump, more than wiping out any savings.
“Ending the payments to insurers would introduce more chaos into an unsettled market, and perversely end up costing the federal government more in the end,” said Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan group that found similar results.
At issue are the ACA’s “cost-sharing” payments, totaling about $7 billion this year, which reimburse insurers for subsidizing out-of-pocket costs for people with modest incomes.