Thursday Links

Posted on by John C. Goodman

Obamacare is making health insurance companies rich.

Aaron Carroll reviews health care systems around the world in 10 minutes. Pretty good on the market-based systems in Switzerland and Singapore and the public/private systems in Australia and New Zealand. But when it comes to the UK and Canada, he fails to mention the extraordinary waits and health care rationing.

Federal health bureaucracies operated by doctors and lawyers regulate about a fifth of our economy and a quarter of the federal budget – jobs that need the insights of economists.

When the cost of prevention is included, the total loss from Covid was lower in the U.S. than in the EU.

The CBO estimated that (Obamacare) exchange enrollees would cost federal taxpayers $6,850 each by 2021. The reality: $20,739, or over three times as much.

1 thought on “Thursday Links”

  1. Thanks for the link to the Adam Millsap article about the costs of the ACA exchange enrollees.

    I absolutely cannot figure out where he gets the number of $20,739 as the cost of the ACA per taxpayer.

    The ACA exchanges will cost about $90 billion this year.

    The federal government will spend about $6.1 trillion.

    So, the ACA subsidies are about 1.5% of federal spending.

    The average income tax payment per taxpayer in 2022 was $20,633. (from a publication called The Balance.) Obviously the taxes paid by the wealthy drive that $20,633 average.

    So, by my old fashioned math, the ACA subsidies are costing the average taxpayer about $300 a year.

    Millsap is writing for Forbes, which has an axe to grind. The number he used here is just careless, unless someone can show me otherwise.

    Reply

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