People are starting to figure out that Obamacare isn’t free health care; it’s wealth transfer health care *UPDATED*

The San Jose Mercury News did an article about the sticker shock many Obamacare supporters are experiencing.  What was great about this article was this quotation, from an ardent supporter:

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.

[snip]

Vinson, of San Jose, will pay $1,800 more a year for an individual policy, while Waschura, of Portola Valley, will cough up almost $10,000 more for insurance for his family of four.

[snip]

But people with no pre-existing conditions like Vinson, a 60-year-old retired teacher, and Waschura, a 52-year-old self-employed engineer, are making up the difference.

“I was laughing at Boehner — until the mail came today,”
Brochures and handouts on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are shown at the education outreach booth sponsor by Daughters of Charity O’Connor Hospital at Santa Clara County Library Alum Rock branch in San Jose on Oct. 1, 2013. (Josie Lepe/Staff)
Waschura said, referring to House Speaker John Boehner, who is leading the Republican charge to defund Obamacare.

“I really don’t like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family’s pocket each year, that’s otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy.”

It’s always great to see a few liberals mugged by reality. May there be many more in the coming days and years. Frankly, these people deserve to suffer. I’m sorry to say that, but it’s true. They worked hard to get this monstrosity passed into law, and I hope they suffer horribly because of it.  I’m sorry that you, my dear friends, will also have to suffer, because you tried to stop this train wreck.  But to the extent we knew it was a train wreck, let me reiterate my fondest desire that every elite liberal I knew is royally screwed.  And perhaps because you’re smarter about economic cause and effect, you will come out of this disaster stronger and better than they will.

Okay, I’m done being vindictive.  The same article also struck me because I suspect it contains a certain amount of dishonesty and misdirection.  I don’t have proof for my theory, just a strong suspicion.

First, read this:

Even those who don’t qualify for the tax subsidies could see their rates drop because Obamacare doesn’t allow insurers to charge people more if they have pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and cancer, he said.

People like Marilynn Gray-Raine.

The 64-year-old Danville artist, who survived breast cancer, has purchased health insurance for herself for decades. She watched her Anthem Blue Cross monthly premiums rise from $317 in 2005 to $1,298 in 2013. But she found out last week from the Covered California site that her payments will drop to about $795 a month.

Can you spot the problem? Before Obamacare passed, Gray-Raine was paying $317. Incidentally, I know that the article is careful to say that her premiums were $317 in 2005, but I’m willing to bet that the dramatic rate hikes started in 2009 when Obamacare passed. As the article concedes, without Obamacare’s market manipulation, rates tended to go up by about 4% annually.  I’m lousy at math, but it seems to me that a 4% annual increase on a $317 monthly premium would see her paying $434 per month by 2013.

Something happened in 2009, of course, to change that typical trajectory.  2009 is when insurance companies responded to the fact that Obamacare, instead of allowing them to sell true insurance based upon risk analysis, forced them to prepare for cost-shifting mode.  They knew that, come 2013, insurers will have to pay for everybody’s care (including maternity care for old men), regardless of risk factors. The moment the law was passed, and with increasing aggression as the law’s implementation loomed, insurers responded in the only logical way — by raising premiums. That’s almost certainly the explanation for Gray-Raine’s huge premium increase, one that saw her paying $981 more in 2013 than before Obamacare. Gray-Raine professes herself thankful that she’s going to be paying $795 less than she was paying last month, but she seems to have lost sight of the fact that she’s still paying almost $200 more per month than before the government meddled with the marketplace.

An ignorant populace is a dangerous populace.  That’s all I can say.

UPDATE:  Ace spotted an out and out lie in the article from an Obama shill:

A shill from Covered California pops in to claim that it’s always been said that there would be both winners and losers under ObamaCare.

Um, no. Nancy Pelosi guaranteed that everyone’s rate would go down. Obama promised a $2500 per year reduction in premiums. He campaigned on it.