ObamaCare Increases Cost-Sharing Too

One of the most common liberal complaints about Paul Ryan's proposed Medicare reform—and Medicare voucher plans in general—is that it wouldn't actually decrease the cost of health care. Instead, voucherizing the program would simply force seniors to share a greater portion of the health care cost. In other words, it would increase an individual's portion of the cost-sharing arrangement. 

What these criticisms tend to leave out is that ObamaCare is almost certain to increase cost-sharing too. According to a new survey of employers by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 84 percent of employers expect to make changes in order to help offset the additional cost burden imposed by the new health care law. In practice, as John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis notes in a summary of the survey, in practice, "make changes" means "raise premiums, deductibles, and co-payments." Still others will likely lose their current employer coverage entirely: As Goodman writes, "almost half (45%) of companies 'indicated they were likely to change subsidies for employee medical coverage' as a result of the law—quite possibly dumping their employees on to government-run exchanges."

It's not rocket science: When costs go up, some or all of those additional costs will be shifted to employees. ObamaCare makes it more expensive for many businesses to keep existing health benefits, so employees will end up paying a greater share. 

It's happened before, too. In Massachusetts, RomneyCare was explicitly sold as a way of controlling costs. It didn't. And so, as insurance premiums continued to climb, employers reported in 2009 that they expected to shift a greater share of the cost burden to employees. Given that ObamaCare was modeled on RomneyCare, we can all look forward to the same thing nationally.