Remember, the HHS mandate by Secretary Sebelius was that even the healthcare insurance at Catholic universities (Franciscan University and Ave Maria University) had to offer contraceptives, abortifacients, sterilizations, and abortions – after all, it wasn’t an abridgement of conscience that was being sundered but that if they didn’t, Catholics theology was waging “the war on women”.
However, this is the flip side of Obamacare “war on the young” – the young are going to start bearing the brunt of the costs as all of the “mandates needed for basic healthcare needs” start rearing their spikes (from the Wall Street Journal):
Some colleges are dropping student health-insurance plans for the coming academic year and others are telling students to expect sharp premium increases because of a provision in the federal health law requiring plans to beef up coverage.
The demise of low-cost, low-benefit health plans for students is a consequence of the 2010 health-care overhaul. The law is intended to expand coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, but it is also eliminating some insurance options.
…Around 600,000 students, about 7% of the total number of 18-to-23-year-olds in college, bought their own insurance, generally plans arranged by schools for which students pay all the premiums, the GAO study said.
Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kan., this past year offered a 12-month plan that cost students $445, while capping payouts at $10,000. For the 2012-13 academic year, the Obama administration said the payout cap must be at least $100,000. Bethany said students would have had to pay more than $2,000 to get that new level of coverage.
“We decided not to offer coverage for our students next year given the proposed increase in premium,” said Bob Schmoll, Bethany’s vice president for finance.
So, a school historically wishes to offer something that is worthwhile for their students – Obamacare says “We know better than you what your students need” (such a Progressive uppity attitude). Oh, you know that the pat answer is “hey, they can go on their parents’ insurance – they’re under 26!”. Well, that assumes, sport, that the parent has such – and chooses to do so (or can afford to do so).
We are now starting to see the first vestige of economic reality that keeps Progressives going “heh?” – TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). When you lard up what has to be offered, the cost HAS to go up. And where are these kids going to go? Some might qualify for Medicaid but am betting most aren’t. However, in this Government mandated “one size WILL fit all”, we are now seeing that the college kids are now the cannon fodder for the cause.
Mr. Schmoll said his school wished it could have kept the limited-coverage plan, which he said was a “fairly robust program for the type of need that most students of that age have.” Even the old premium was “for many a struggle to pay,” he said. Students previously had to sign up for the school’s plan if they didn’t have other insurance. Now students won’t be required to have health coverage.
They known their market, they know the customers, and they know the needs – and from historical data, they know the health outcomes for their customers. They have an advantage that the Obamanauts could never have – they are only looking at their customers. The Obamanauts are looking at these small colleges’ customers as cash cows for the elderly.
The new rules are likely to affect a broad swath of American colleges, particularly small ones. Some 60% of schools’ plans had coverage of $50,000 or less for specific conditions, and almost all of the rest had some sort of payout caps that they will have to do away with by 2014, the GAO study found.
The Obama administration argues that the most-limited-benefit plans colleges previously offered hardly counted as coverage at all.
“Given today’s health system,” the plans “wouldn’t represent a good value,” said Michael Hash, director of the Office of Health Reform at the Department of Health and Human Services. Plans with caps starting at $5,000 or $10,000 “would likely not begin to cover the first day in the hospital,” he said.
The 2010 federal health law aims to ensure that all Americans have solid insurance coverage, whether from their employer, a government program or other source. Starting in 2014, people will have new options to buy insurance through exchanges or enroll in the Medicaid program.
Hubris – it bears repeating again “We know better than you do what your customers need” – even if it prices their customers out of your markets. But that is just a side effect along the road; again, the purpose of the individual mandate, especially for the young, is to load them up with “healthcare debt” in order to pay for the middle aged and elderly healthcare. There is a reason why the colleges have been able to offer cheap policies – students at that age really need little in the way of healthcare comparable to the rest of the population.
The Obamacare fascists just don’t want to admit that deep, dark secret. Problem is, it is a secret that they can’t keep (even though they only have to keep it for a short time IF Obama is re-elected AND the Republicans can’t find the political will to bring it down IF they keep the House).
…Lenoir-Rhyne University of Hickory, N.C., the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa—all private liberal-arts colleges—have told students they are dropping school-sponsored limited-benefit insurance plans starting in the fall. The three colleges said students’ premiums would have gone up roughly tenfold, and they said they could no longer justify making students sign up if they didn’t have their own insurance.
…Obama administration officials said they expected only a few schools to drop health-insurance plans entirely.
No, they are not “expecting”, they are ON THEIR KNEES PRAYING that just a few schools to drop it. A deluge now would kill them.
…Oregon State University currently arranges a plan for students but doesn’t require them to carry coverage. Last year, when the plan covered up to $50,000 in benefits, it cost $2,421 for 12 months, a figure that the school expects to rise.
George Voss of Oregon State’s student health service said he worried that increased premiums could lead to fewer healthy students signing up, leaving only the sicker ones and triggering a death spiral of higher premiums and even lower enrollment. “At some point it becomes untenable to have a plan,” he said.
Customers have to cover ALL costs – and here we see that Government has decided, as it has done before, that it can raise the cost of something and believe that people will simply just allow it to cram it down their throats.
And here in NH, there are STILL legislators (even REPUBLICAN ones) that simply ignore this. Or clapping for it.
