Levin made
the following points on his show on Thursday:
1) Some
Obamacare taxes are repealed. Hooray!
2) The
government will pay $138 billion to cover people with "pre-existing
conditions," a fancy name for people who refuse to get health insurance
until they get sick and then expect you, the taxpayer, to pay for their health
care. One hundred thirty-eight billion dollars is a lot of money.
3) The
federal government will continue to pay all costs of new Medicaid patients
until 2020. That gives states incentives to continue to sign up more and
more people for Medicaid, a program that is rapidly becoming unsustainable.
4) It is
still illegal to sell insurance across state lines. Competition across
state lines would have helped keep premiums down. Now that will not
happen.
4) The
insurance mandates are not repealed, but states can apply for a waiver.
This last
point is the heart of the House bill. A lot of the increased costs of
Obamacare stem from the requirements that insurance cover a whole bunch of
so-called "essential benefits" like drug addiction and psychiatric
services, which raises the cost for everyone who doesn't need or want such
coverage.
Under the
House bill, states can apply for a waiver so insurance companies can sell
insurance without such "essential benefits." They can then offer
policies at much lower costs since they are not offering to cover so many extra
areas.
The
problem with this is that consumers will see lower premiums only if they live
in states that decide to allow insurance companies to sell policies without
such "essential benefits." If you live in a blue state like New
York or California or Illinois, you won't have this choice. The
"repeal" bill puts the decision of what should be in the policies in
the state's hands, not the consumer's. Read
more at American Thinker
