Scott Brown: Obamacare beneficiary

[Brittain33]

Scott Brown ran as the 41st vote to block Obamacare, but now that it's in place, he takes advantage of one of its planks to keep his 24-year-old daughter insured on his heathcare after she would have aged out in the old regime.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/05/01/474099/scott-brown-aca/?mobile=nc

Now, I don't think that his opposition to health care reform, no matter how opportunistic, should mean that he has to forego its benefits; any more than Obama should sit back and be outspent 10-1 by Romney's billionaire donors because he opposes the Citizens United decision. However, this shows why repealing Obamacare is harder than it looks. Obama's health care reform bill helped fill in many of the awkward and inefficient holes in our health care system, and many people are happy that their kids who had been priced out of the individual health care market have access to their employers' group plans.

[Brittain33]

Bringing the Ayla Browns into the insurance market benefits everyone. For the insurance market as a whole, it helps spread risk among more people and lowers rates. For the young people themselves who (for whatever reason) don't have access to the super-cheap insurance Torie's nephew has, it gives them access to the health care market and price levels set through large party negotiation as well as catastrophic insurance. It helps the economy because young people are free to pursue jobs without worrying about whether they carry benefits and include them in the health care market. Pretty much the only group that doesn't benefit are the employers who are on the hook for a small increase in their overall insurance payments--but happily, they're paying on the lowest risk demographic out there and strengthening their ties with employees while doing it. Ultimately they can shift some cost from salary to this and come out equal in the end with parents being able to support their kids with their institutional health care. It's a win-win-win-win.

[Brittain33]

Wouldn't it be better to keep taxes relatively lower, and higher income folks' snouts more out of the public trough, than the reverse?  The worst of all worlds of course is what we have now: relatively lower taxes, and entitlements gone means test-less wild.

I don't consider Ayla Brown to be a high income person. She has access to a fair bit of family support, but she's not rich herself. Scott Brown isn't wealthy by Senate standards, although he and his wife are probably 1% because he had a book deal and she's a news anchor.

[Brittain33]

Given the success Ayla has had as a result of her famous dad and stint on American Idol, I'd wager to say that she's about as high income as you can get for a 24-year-old.

I'm looking at Wikipedia and I can't judge if she's achieved any lasting success. Her music career looks to be struggling. But I don't really know.

[Brittain33]

Don't Dems favor the EITC? That's means tested by definition.

[Brittain33]

Would Romneycare not have done this?

Romneycare doesn't mandate that employers extend coverage to adult children of employees, but it does (horrors!) offer reduced benefit plans through the commonwealth to young people who were previously priced out of the individual health insurance market.

So, in fact, I didn't set out to target Brown as a free rider, but if Ayla lives in Mass., she is. She could easily buy individual health insurance at an affordable price, an option not previously available, but instead she lets Obamacare mandate that her Dad's insurance cover her for free.

[Brittain33]

For reference: For a person of Ayla's age, Romneycare mandates she buy a policy which costs, at a minimum, $250 a month. I'm currently paying $305 for insurance I had to buy through the state. Add 30 years to my age, and the minimum price jumps to $470.

That's monthly, and for just one person. I wouldn't call any of that "bargain priced."

It's a reasonable price, and there are subsidies for people who can't afford it, though.

[Brittain33]

So it is fine for Scott Brown's adult daughter to have her health insurance covered on the government dime, but not for most Americans?  And you see no hypocrisy in this?

I don't see hypocrisy. Brown in theory has voted to take away his daughter's insurance as well as that of other Americans. But as long as it's the law, she can take part in it. (Also, she's not him and isn't responsible for his politics, even though it's not like she hasn't benefited from the association.)

[Brittain33]

It's a reasonable price, and there are subsidies for people who can't afford it, though.

But it's not any cheaper than going out and buying insurance on the open market in, say, California. That's what I don't get — Romneycare was supposed to make insurance cheaper. But instead of making insurance cheaper, it just made it mandatory.

I thought individual insurance in Mass. was way more than $300 before. It's been a long time since I was freelance but I thought it was essentially unaffordable because of the adverse selection problem and the lack of group discounting.

My knowledge of individual insurance in CA is limited to Torie's experience with his nephew. I don't know how robust the individual market is there. I did know the individual market in NY was basically destroyed by AIDS.

[Brittain33]

To me, it demonstrates that some Republicans don't believe the law is that bad, but only rail against it for partisan reasons and opportunism.

Now this I can agree with.