From Reason.tv:
One of the features of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health-care reform bill colloquially known as Obamacare, is the creation of insurance exchanges that will offer heavily subsidized policies and coverage for people who cannot get insurance through their employers. …
In a survey of employers released in June, McKinsey found that 30 percent will “definitely or probably” drop their coverage as Obamacare kicks into high gear in 2014. Among “employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion rises to more than 50 percent,” says the report. Why? It will be cheaper to pay fines than to provide coverage.
Glenn Morton, the author of the new book Passing Obamacare, discusses another problem in the above video: Mandates on “medical loss ratios,” or maximum administrative costs to insurers will reduce revenue for insurance brokers who find good deals for employers who offer insurance. Hence, another incentive for insurers to stop offering coverage and send their employees to the politically-controlled exchanges.
Read more at Reason.tv: Obamacare, Government Insurance Exchanges, & The Coming Price Explosion – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine.
Also check out this article by Byron York in the Washington Examiner (via FIRM). An excerpt:
The bottom line is that the new system appears designed to push more and more people into the exchanges, with more and more people receiving health coverage subsidized by the government. For the cynical, it might even appear that is what Obama and his Democratic allies wanted all along. Remember that Obama said, during a January 2008 debate that, “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would set up a single-payer system.” He couldn’t pass a single-payer system, or even a public-option system, even when he had filibuster-proof majorities in Congress. But he could enact a system that will take a slower route in that direction.
