Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill

December 16, 2009 by THE POLITICUS

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Why Progressives Are Batshit Crazy to Oppose the Senate Bill
by Nate Silver @ 3:42 AM on Tuesday 12/15/09
(This article originally appeared at fivethirtyeight.com)

Pick your subheadline:

a) It's time to stop being polite and start getting real.
b) Here's hoping a picture is worth 1,000 words.

Any questions?

OK, I imagine that there will be a few. Here's how I came up with these numbers.

Senate Bill. These estimates are straightforward -- they're taken directly from the CBO's report on premiums for people at different income levels. A family of four earning an income of $54,000 would pay $4,000 in premiums, and could expect to incur another $5,000 in out-of-pocket costs. The $4,000 premium represents a substantial discount, because the government is covering 72 percent of the premium -- meaning that the gross cost of the premium is $14,286, some $10,286 of which the government pays.

One caution: this reflects the situation before the public option was removed from the bill. But, provided that the subsidy schedule isn't changed as well, that shouldn't change these numbers much.

Status Quo. In 2009, the average premium for a family in the individual market was $6,328, according to the insurance lobbying group AHIP. However, this figure paints an optimistic picture for two reasons. Firstly, the average family size in the AHIP dataset is 3.03 people; for a family of four, that number would scale upward to $7,925, by my calculations. Secondly, the CBO's estimates are based on 2016 figures, not 2009, so to make an apples-to-apples comparison, we have to account for inflation. According to Kaiser, the average cost of health coverage has increased by about 8.7 percent annually over the past decade, and by 8.8 percent for family coverage. Let's scale that down slightly, assuming 7.5 annual inflation in premiums from 2009 through 2016 inclusive. That would bring the cost of the family's premium up by a nominal 66 percent, to $13,149. And remember: these are based on estimates of premiums provided by the insurance lobby. I have no particular reason to think that they're biased, but if they are, it's probably on the low side.

Read full story @ http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/why-progressives-are-batshit-craz...

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