Policy

Try Not to Laugh at the Latest Folks Losing Their Health Coverage

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Sure, schadenfreude can be fun, but let's not forget that the rolling disaster that is the Affordable Care Act is an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson to progressives about the inability of central planners, no matter how smart they are (or just think they are), to truly know enough about the markets to control them. Obamacare cancellations are hitting people that actually matter: the New York elite.

From their very own hometown newspaper, The New York Times:

Many in New York's professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama's health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.

They are part of an unusual informal health insurance system that has developed in New York in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York's individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.

But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.

Read the whole piece here and try not to chuckle too hard at the fancy smart people having the exact same problems trying to use the program as the rest of us muggles.

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