Who speaks for the Obamacare middle class? Betsy McCaughey –ObamaCare is making the middle class the new uninsured | New York Post

ObamaCare’s defenders insist premium hikes are not a problem because whenever premiums go up, so do subsidies for low-income buyers. They pay the same year after year, regardless of how premiums soar.

These ObamaCare apologists never mention buyers who don’t qualify for subsidies. Under the law, individuals earning over $47,520 and couples earning over $64,080 must pay the full premium. No compassion for middle-class folks. They’re chopped liver. (emphasis added)

In 2017, the average premium for a family of four buying on the eHealth site — which sells market-rate plans directly to consumers — reached $14,300 with a whopping $8,322 deductible. That means shelling out over $22,600 before seeing a penny from insurance. You can pay your mortgage for that. Ouch!

In 2018, many buyers will conclude they can’t afford insurance, because it would consume up to a quarter of their pre-tax income, according to University of Houston health law professor Seth Chandler.

This seems like a great time to remind everyone of Colorado’s 2018 Obamacare rate increases:

Left out is Rocky Mountain Health Plans who only sells plans in Mesa County, Freedom Health, which only sells plans in very specific circumstances and the Anthem Catastrophic PPO, whose rate increase is 33%.

The average rate increase, according to the Division of Insurance is 26.7%. This has 2 potential affects on middle class consumers:

1.  Very drastic rate increases, and the the only course of action  they have to counteract this rate increase are:
   1. Change to a less expensive plan (14 counties only have one insurer, Anthem BCBS, so that is not an option). This step obviously can only do so much.
   2. Sign up for a Health Care Sharing Ministries plan. These plans are NOT insurance but do provide benefits and would shield them from the penalty. A statement of faith, which varies from company to company, must be agreed to. This option can also be shored up with supplemental plans such as accident and critical illness. They are far from perfect.
   3. Go uninsured
2. Another possibility is the middle class consumer does qualify for a tax credit but their income is very close to the 400% of the Federal Poverty Level where the tax credit disappears. If this insureds make a $1 too much, they must pay back all the tax credit they received. This is called the “subsidy cliff.” In high cost insurance areas, it is already significant. For example, a family of 4 in Durango has a subsidy cliff in 2017 that is greater than $15,000. With a 26.7% increase in premium, their subsidy cliff will rise in tandem to approximately $19,000. This is quite a significant perverse incentive to decline pay raises, not change to a better paying job, etc. Makes me sick.

But as Betsy McCaughey basically says, no one is looking out for the middle class, they have no voice.

I’d like to say this is how you get more Trump, but he, or at least the Republican Congress has failed to date.

Added 9/20: I spoke with a client today who was fairly gleeful regarding the middle class feeling the pain of high insurance rates. He said that was how things got fixed. By fixed he meant single payer. I would say he was representative of the Boulderite group think and their inherent trust in big government.