The Myth we "Consume" more Health Care!!! It's not a Product.

I have "shopped" for health care INSURANCE in the individual market, but again, insurers don't provide health care. Insurance is a consumer product. But you can't tell Republicans that, because they mistakenly or intentionally mix insurance in with hospitals and doctors. 

Which brings me to Paul Ryan’s plan for overhauling health care.

A Forbes analysis of Ryan’s plan defies logic. Take for instance the untaxed employer based insurance, which I never liked and believe should be replaced with a single payer national plan.

The wording is important:

The exemption encourages people to seek overly generous health plans. As Ryan’s plan explains, that gives “employers and employees an incentive to select more extensive coverage than they otherwise would.” People then use those generous plans to consume more healthcare services than they would if they were paying for them directly. Employer health premiums have jumped by as much as 15 percent as result, according to the CBO.

“Consume more Healthcare?” Who “consumes” healthcare? We don’t consumer more heart surgeries, more cancer treatments, right?

Another words, we didn’t choose to get cancer or heart disease just so we could shop for the best treatment. No one's shopping in this “market.” 

"Overly Generous Health Plans?" Really? That suggests we're covering too many diseases, ailments and better lifestyle choices? There's nothing "generous" about treating all pain, trying to save all lives, and treat all diseases. 

Ryan's ridiculously low Subsidies: The WTF moment came when the Forbes article lied about how Ryan's subsidies would pay for most peoples premiums, deceptively suggesting any extra cash could go into a health savings account. 

This was an easy one to spot for me, having shopped for family plans for two decades. See if the numbers below make sense to you:

If lawmakers are smart, they’ll set the value of those credits at $1,200 for those aged 18 to 35, $2,100 for those 35 to 50, and $3,000 for anyone over 50. Families would get another $900 for each child.

So according to the numbers above, if you're a couple 35 and above with kids, you'll get a subsidy of $6,000.

Credits at those levels would cover most of the cost of a basic pre-Obamacare plan in most parts of the country, according to Dr. Jeffrey Anderson of the Hudson Institute. Anderson’s analysis is based on a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office .

But according to that GAO study, the screen capture below proves, depending on your state, how ridiculous "covering most of the cost" would be. Don't exclude super high deductibles and copays either. The small print explains how the graphs below don't reflect the actual price. Doh!

My own family premiums in 2011 looked like this: $675 mo/ $10,500 deductible, which isn't even close to the Wisconsin rates charted below. We were a healthy family, and were offered those "low" premiums in exchange for that sky high deductible.

But take a look at Alabama in the graph below Wisconsin. Needless to say, you won't be adding to your health savings account anytime soon, :

While the article blames ObamaCare for double digit premium increases in the individual market, the business premiums weren't much different. See any "spikes?"

The cost of growth also backs up my case that the ACA not only didn't double premiums....: