The more you know...

If you're familiar with any of my sparring matches with our friend from Virginia - (He generally comments as Anonymous but, to his credit, doesn't try to hide his identity.  We all seem to know each other around here.) - then you know where I stand on the ObamaCare debate.  I'm certainly not fer.  I'm agin'.  That's all well and good.  We all have our views and our philosophies.  If you're not familiar with these discussions... I don't know.  Whatever.  Trust me, I guess.  I'm agin'.

Anyhow...  Maybe you love ObamaCare.  Maybe you hate it.  Maybe you - like me - think a complete move AWAY from insurance for commonly experienced ailments would be the right reform to lower costs and improve efficiency.  Or maybe you - like me - think a full-blown socialist model would be far better than what we're about to experience.  (If you think there's a contradiction in the preceding two sentences, then I suggest that you re-examine your premise.)

Whichever way you see the debate, you might as well know what lies before you.  This is a somewhat speculative thing to say, I'll concede, since the whole issue has yet to face a Supreme Court decision or the 2012 elections, but for now it's the law of the land.  I see no point in guessing about whether or not the Court will, for the first time in recorded history, deny that the Commerce Clause is anything short of a blank check for Congressional power.  There's a 4-4-1 split in ideological terms right now, but far more conservative courts in the past have declined to rein in Congress.  I won't hold my breath.

I'll proceed on the basis that both houses of Congress passed (in a technical sense) the law.  The president signed it.  The law is what it is.  Certain things have already taken place according to a given schedule.  (Over-budget and under-enrolled high risk pools, accelerated premium hikes to compensate for mandated coverages, etc.)  Certain other things are set to take place according to a given schedule.  If you harbor dreams about a full repeal or perhaps a court rebuke, then I guess you're not on the same page as I am.  No harm in that, but it's my blog.  So we'll be dealing with the reality of the day.

So what happens when the schedule runs its course?  Will all your ailments be cured and cost you next to nothing or will Van Jones and Cass Sunstein pull the plug on your grandmother while they drink cocktails and sing hosannas to Karl Marx?  I don't know.  Somewhere between the two, I would guess, although most likely not squarely in the middle.  One side or the other must be right, I suspect, even if some hyperbole has managed to find its way into the debate.  (The IPAB really is part of the deal though, lest you wonder which way I think the story will tilt.  I'm not hiding my view on the topic.  Just acknowledging that it's not the only view in town.)

If you're like me, you have excellent insurance coverage.  "Cadillac plans," as the Democrats say.  Of course, it's coverage for which you're being raped (fiscally speaking) by your labor union in order to subsidize the more "needy" among your union brethren.  (Translation - I don't use much any health care.  I pay a shit-ton of money for my insurance though, required by my contract, as does my employer.  Other "brothers" and their families use a shit-ton of health care and pay the exact same amount for their insurance.)  That's fine.  I can afford it.  My day will come, perhaps, assuming that I don't manage to check out before then.  Or maybe it won't.  Whatever.  I don't sweat it.

If you're not like me, but rather like a growing majority of Americans, you pay more than you would like for coverage that provides less than you would like.  This is the squeeze that provided the impetus for the 2010 law.  Truth be told - quite a few of you might even be better off under a single-payer system where the government could deny you cancer treatment, but at least you would get the basics as part of your taxpayer-funded "free" health care.  Certainly the cost squeeze and the coverage concerns were at the root of the final push for ObamaCare, in any event.

It's all a matter of mathematics.  Unless you live in Lake Wobegon, there's no place where everyone is above average.  Some people win under any given system.  Some lose.  Survey after survey showed, leading up to the final passage of the law, that a majority of us were fine with our own health care.  The cost was always the issue.  It wasn't the 30 million without insurance, the vast majority of which were illegal aliens, people already eligible for government assistance, or those who simply preferred to spend their money elsewhere.  It was the cost.

Costs will go down now, we've been told.  Well then - AWESOME!  What's not to like?  Skipping past the obligatory 'If you believe X... I have a bridge to sell in Y...' line about costs, I guess we're all pretty interested in knowing whether or not we'll be able to keep our current coverage.  That's the part that we already liked, after all.  But we were sold on an unequivocal YES last year, weren't we?  I mean, that was the quote of the day/week/month/year.  "If you like your plan, you can keep it."  Only - 30% of your employers may disagree.  Are you one of the three or one of the seven?

Is the Journal editorial board inherently conservative?  Yep.  So dismiss their reporting of the survey if you like, but at least know what it says.  That's the topic of this post, after all.  "The more you know..."

My employer has no opinion on the matter, given that I'm insured by my union with a pre-defined employer contribution to the cost.  Your employer... I don't know.  Ask 'em.  I do know that my last monthly Teamsters newsletter explained how awesome ObamaCare is.  Then, in the same article, it explained why we were fortunate enough to have been given an exemption.  (Just let that one percolate for a minute.)  Pretty amusing to me.  Probably less amusing to someone who has a chronic and/or terminal ailment and gets screwed by the exemption as his benefits run out.  Fenian Godfather's Axiom #129 - If you really like a regulation, you probably won't wish you were exempt from its consequences.

In my view, the whole charade is a stalking horse for a single-payer system.  The post-2014 penalty for opting out is cheaper than anyone's current premiums.  The post-2014 world is one where you can get insurance after you're already sick or injured.  Why in the hell would you buy insurance beforehand then?  They might as well do away with the pretense and get on with it.  Copy the NHS and let the chips fall where they may.  Once we know the rules on whose survival is cost-effective and whose isn't, my friends who remain in the financial planning business can go ahead and reap the rewards.  Estate planning is a lucrative line of work, after all.  Maybe those guys can be the ones to buy the beers at our next get-together.  I'm always the one to say it's my shout.  It's high time for a change.

Seriously though, keep an eye on any cryptic or amibiguous communications from your employers.  That's how this stuff tends to unfold.  Don't let it catch you off guard.