NY Times: You WILL lose your Plan. You WILL pay more. You WILL stop complaining about it.

The NY Times editorial page this morning laid out some of the basic tenets of the Affordable Care Act: People will lose their plans, and they will pay more. An adjacent oped has an interesting view on those who complain about this.

Up to seven million people may be able to get health policies without paying any premium at all. Some four million people may have to pay more for new (and better) policies, not all of whom will necessarily be upset at getting better coverage at a competitive rate.

(At least) 4 million will not be able to keep their plan and "may have to pay more." This is just the individual market. The employer based market is much bigger and the disruptions to the employer market will be much larger as well. For instance, my small employer will be switching plans to avoid the Cadillac tax. The Cadillac Tax is a tax on high-price, high-benefit plans. The reason our old plan was a Cadillac plan is because we are a small company operating in NY. We have high premiums, but certainly not extravagant, not even generous, benefits. But such is the "logic" of the law that I must change to a plan with FEWER benefits for the purpose of..... If anyone can tell me I'd love to hear the answer.  The Affordable Care Act's response to their assertion American's pay too much for health care is to incentivice me from buying health care. Ok, but why? What if I want to buy health care? What's wrong with that? I like Apple products. An increasing portion of my budget over the years has gone to Apple products. But that's not a national crisis. I digress.

What was equally interesting to me was an op-ed by Lori Gottlieb remarking on the unsympathetic responses her friends had to her complaint about losing her plan and having to pay more for it.

“Obamacare or Kafkacare?” I posted on Facebook as soon as I hung up with Anthem. I vented about the call and wrote that the president should be protecting the middle class, not making our lives substantially harder. For extra sympathy, I may have thrown in the fact that I’m a single mom. (O.K., I did.)

 She wanted sympathy and instead was told to suck it up.

I understand the whole point of the law is to do this. The point of the law is to make some pay more and get less so others can pay less and get more. This whole Rube Goldberg contraption has that guiding principle. I do get that. But what the supporters of the law are finding out is that people get kind of cheesed when the foundational promises made when passing this law: keep your plan, keep your doctor, lower premiums, fewer uninsured, were deliberate deceptions, at worst, or made from ignorance of the law's consequences, at best.

Bill

Oh, and those heartless, evil, racist, stupid, insane, extreme neanderthals have been pointing out the law's promises were untrue for years. But tell me. If someone is a heartless, evil, racist, stupid, insane, extreme neanderthal for pointing out the truth, what is the person who has been deliberately deceiving or the person who didn't understand the untruths being promised?