Americans Also Enjoying Trade Offs That Come With ObamaCare
President Obama's new budget proposal notes that 'Americans are already enjoying many of the protections put in place" thanks to the 2010 health care overhaul. But the White House appears less keen to mention the trade offs that those alleged benefits entail. For example, the proposal notes that "young adults under age 26 can now stay on their parents' policies." This is true, but what the report doesn't note is that this requirement contributes to the rising cost of insurance. The same goes for the budget's brag that "all new private market health insurance plans now must cover critical preventive care services such as mammograms and colonoscopies without charging a deductible, copay, or coinsurance." Despite how ObamaCare boosters have described this policy, the preventive care mandates in the law are far from free to the patient, and, as Cato Institute health policy director Michael Cannon has noted, not likely to be cost effective either. The budget also touts changes to children's health insurance regulations: "Because of the ACA, insurance companies can no longer deny coverage to children under the age of 19 due to a pre-existing condition." And because of that rule, many big-name health insurers have decided to simply stop offering child-only health insurance policies altogether. Somehow I suspect that parents looking for individual health insurance policies for their children aren't exactly enjoying this so-called protection.
