On Saturday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted the hypocritical fury of Linda Greenhouse at the New York Times that the Supreme Court has taken on the King v. Burwell case over the legality of Obamacare subsidies in states which don't have their own Obamacare exchanges.
I need to address another item of Greenhouse gas contained therein, namely her claim that the Affordable Care Act requires no one to "spend more than 8 percent of his or her income of health insurance." That's only true if one chooses not to get covered.
The two paragraphs in question read as follows:
The law is also designed to make insurance affordable, with no one being required to spend more than 8 percent of his or her income of health insurance.
Federal income tax subsidies available on the exchanges are supposed to bring premium costs below that threshold; without the credits, many people would be exempt from the individual mandate and the law would fail.
"Supposed to"? Those two words could be interpreted as Greenhouse knowingly shading the truth without explicitly acknowledging it.
The Obamacarefacts.com site, a de facto government shill, says the following:
- The average American will pay between 3% – 9.5% of their income on insurance after cost assistance.
- Insurance costing 8% of your income is considered affordable insurance for individuals. 9.5% is considered affordable for job based insurance.
The first bullet point wrecks Greenhouse's apparent contention that no one has to pay more than 8 percent of their income to obtain Obamacare insurance. The way around that is to choose not to get covered and go without insurance. This year at least, those who make that choice won't pay the individual mandate penalty, but the situation in future years is unclear. The law's promoters promised to reduce the number of uninsured, not force people to go without coverage because it is unaffordable by the government's own definition.
Beyond that, hundreds of thousands of Americans for sure — and perhaps millions — who need to purchase insurance on Obamacare exchanges in order to have legally required coverage will have to pay far more than that supposed 8 percent of income benchmark, and even far more than the 9.5 percent cited above, if they wish to obtain "Silver Plan" coverage, the law's primary plan category. The people in that unfortunate group consist largely of those whose incomes exceed four times the federal poverty level and are age 50 and above.
Here are the specifics:
All premiums subsidies disappear after the first dollar of income earned above the 400% of FPL threshold, which then causes premiums to skyrocket. The older the household's adults are, the worse the premium shock.
Here is just one example, for nonsmoker(s) living in zip code 45202 (Cincinnati), obtained from the premium estimator at the Kaiser Family Foundation:
- At an annual income of $46,680, the net annual premium for a 60 year-old single person is $4,463 per year ($372 per month), or 9.56 percent of income, thanks to a subsidy of $129 per month.
- At an annual income of $46,681, that individual's subsidy disappears. The annual premium becomes $6,014 per year ($501 per month), or almost 13 percent of income.
- For a couple who are both age 62 with a combined annual income of $62,920, the net annual premium is $6,015 per year ($501 per month), or 9.56 percent of income, thanks to subsidy of $560 per month.
- At an annual income of $62,921, the couple's subsidy disappears. The annual premium becomes $12,733 per year ($1,061 per month), or over 20 percent of income.
Linda Greenhouse has certainly demonstrated breathtaking ignorance of the law's financial realities. (Either that, or as I noted above, she does know and she weaseled her way through with how the law is "supposed to" work.)
There's certainly no reason to believe that she has any better understanding of the rest of the law, or credibility in evaluating legal claims against it.
The Times owed its readers a column containing truth, not fiction, and clearly failed to provide it.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
