Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Let me entertain you

As the Ironman at Political Calculations demonstrates, the average American has had less disposable income to devote to entertainment in recent years, because more has had to go to health insurance premiums. And Obamacare since 2010 has only made the trend worse;
A generic version of this curve [click on the above link to see] is often presented in basic economics textbooks, where it is often referred to as the "Guns and Butter" curve, which is used to illustrate the trade offs that consumers have to make when they have limited resources and are forced to choose how much of two very different goods they can afford to obtain based on their cost.
We bet you never expected the choice to be between health insurance and entertainment! As the chart reveals, consumers in recent years have found themselves in the situation where they are being forced to give up entertainment because of the rising costs of health insurance. Because entertainment is always a voluntary expenditure, which people choose to do in their leisure time as they engage in their preferred activities, anything that negatively impacts their ability to consume entertainment-related goods and services can be considered to be something that negatively affects their quality of life.
In this case, the negative impact upon their quality of life is the result of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which is alternatively known as just the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or more popularly as "Obamacare".
And the younger you are, the more entertainment you'll find yourself deprived.
...because the premiums paid by those consuming the most health care services (the Age 55-64 group), satisfying the Affordable Care Act's community rating mandate requires health insurers to further jack up the costs paid by younger Americans - adding to their increased costs. This is very specifically why U.S. health insurers jacked up the cost of health insurance for the Age 18-24 group as sharply as they did after 2011.
That, and young people have little experience of life beyond entertainment?

...the implementation of Obamacare decreased the quality of life for average Americans by driving up the cost of health insurance. By forcing average American consumers to only be able to choose policies with unnecessary and bloated coverage and by forcing them to subsidize the demographically higher income and the wealthiest consumers of health care services through their premiums or else pay higher income taxes, the ACA is costing tens of millions of Americans hundreds and thousands of dollars each that they can no longer spend how they would rather choose.
Never trust anyone over 30.

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