In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that a medium-level “silver” plan — which covers 70 percent of a beneficiary’s expected health costs — on the California health exchange would cost $5,200 annually. More recently, a report from the consulting firm Milliman predicted it would carry a $450 monthly premium. Yesterday, we got the real numbers. And they’re lower than anyone thought.
As always, Sarah Kliff has the details. The California exchange will have 13 insurance options, and the heavy competition appears to be driving down prices. The most affordable silver-level plan is charging $276-a-month. The second-most affordable plan is charging $294. And all this is before subsidies. Someone making twice the poverty line, say, will only pay $104-a-month.
Sparer plans are even cheaper. A young person buying the cheapest “bronze”-level plan will pay $172 — and that, again, is before any subsidies.
California is a particularly important test for Obamacare. It’s not just the largest state in the nation. It’s also one of the states most committed to implementing Obamacare effectively. Under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — remember how that really happened? — California was the first state to begin building its insurance exchanges. The state’s outreach efforts are unparalleled. Its insurance regulators are working hard to bring in good plans and make sure they’re playing fair. If California can’t make the law work, perhaps no one can. But if California can make the law work, it shows that others can, too.
Continue reading “Good news for Obamacare”
Category: Politics As Usual
Thoughtful discussion on Obama’s drone policy
On All In with Chris Hayes last night:
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Tom Terrific
Finally finds a Latino on his staff!
Delinquent student loans through the roof
If I had kids in high school right now, I’d make them think long and hard before taking out school loans. There’s still a theoretical edge in getting hired, but enough to justify being in debt servitude for the rest of your life?
Overdue student loans reached an all-time high as students struggle to find work after college, according to a government report renewing alarms about the rising burden of higher-education debt.
Eleven percent of student loans were seriously delinquent — at least 90 days past due — in the third quarter of 2012, compared with 6 percent in the first quarter of 2003, according to the report by the U.S. Education Department. Almost 30 percent of 20- to 24-year-olds aren’t employed or in school, the study found.
The research is being released amid concern in Congress and President Barack Obama’s administration about rising college costs and $1 trillion in outstanding student loans, the largest category of consumer debt besides mortgages. Borrowers say the burden is affecting their choice of jobs and their ability to buy homes and get married.
“Today’s economy puts young graduates in a difficult position,” Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which published the report, said in a statement. “A college diploma no longer guarantees a direct pathway to the middle class, making it harder to justify the expense of a degree.”
Virtually Speaking Thursday
Economist Dean Baker and Jay Ackroyd discuss the current state of the economics profession. More here:
Listen live or later: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/
Follow @deanbaker13 @jayackroyd @ceprdc
Why not storm shelters for OK schools?
Don’t be silly, you can’t ask oil companies to give up their tax breaks!
So why aren’t there storm shelters in every school? Certainly Oklahoma, which boasts the 5th largest oil production in the United States, could afford to do it. They’ve claimed that they couldn’t afford the cost and that they’ve applied for grant money from FEMA to do it, but when the state gives over $200 million in breaks to the oil companies, there’s no excuse why they couldn’t supply every school and government building with a shelter that could survive the worst of twisters. It’s not that they can’t, it’s that lobbyist money has bought and paid for legislators who will advance the profits of the 1% over the lives of the residents of Oklahoma and their children.
Continue reading “Why not storm shelters for OK schools?”
More on Helicopter Ben
This is why people need to stop celebrating our rapidly falling deficits. Our deficits aren’t dropping because we’re doing something right. They’re dropping because we’re doing everything wrong. We’re cutting deficits much too quickly in the next few years — that’s what Bernanke’s testimony is about. We’re letting them rise (albeit modestly) between 2016 and 2023. We’re doing basically nothing about long-term deficits, which is where the problem actually lies. And we’re using policies, like sequestration, that most everyone agrees are bad policy — so we’re cutting spending by cutting the wrong kind of spending.
No wonder Bernanke’s irked.
49 schools
Will close in Chicago. They claim it will be more efficient and will allow them to make better use of resources, but it’s really about handing all the money over to the charter schools.
Angry birds
Vs. Zombie Pigs. Guess which side is Rahm Emanuel’s! What a corrupt scumbag.
I know you’ll be shocked, but…
Rep. Darrel Issa, the committee’s chairman, said that the committee learned just yesterday that the IRS completed its own investigation a year before a Treasury Department Inspector General report was completed.
But here’s the letter he wrote to the IRS inspector general a year ago about this very thing! He even cited this article in Roll Call.
Meanwhile, the real scandals – millions out of the work force, college grads who can’t get jobs, banks stealing houses unabated — those scandals go unattended. I wonder why.
Thanks to DUI lawyer Kush Arora.