No Oil for Pacifists: Chart of the Day

Nearing the end of his term, Wisconsin’s now departed Democratic Governor Jim Doyle ordered a review of how Obamacare would affect insurance coverage within the state. The Governor turned to Jonathan Gruber, a health policy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gruber actually was part of Obamacare: starting in 2009, he earned almost $400,000 consulting for Obama's Department of Health and Human Services. So, Gruber's no free-market fanatic.

Yet Gruber's report, "The Impact of the ACA on Wisconsin's Health Insurance Market," is a devastating indictment of Obamacare, says Peter Suderman in Reason:

[Gruber starts by predicting] that the law is expected to increase health insurance coverage; approximately 340,000 of the state’s residents are expected to gain insurance coverage by 2016. Of course, about 170,000 of the newly covered will be shuffled into Medicaid, a program that’s wrecking state budgets and providing, at best, uncertain health benefits.

Meanwhile expanding the state’s health insurance coverage will come at a significant cost to hundreds of thousands of individuals, especially within the individual market, where the law has the greatest effect. Gruber projects that the average individual market health insurance premium will cost about 30 percent more than if ObamaCare had never passed. For most individual market enrollees, the average premium increase will be even higher: 87 percent of the individual market is projected to see a premium price increase of 41 percent.

Defenders of the law might note that more than half--about 57 percent--of those who get their insurance through the individual market will benefit from the law’s generous health insurance subsidies. But even discounting the enormous public cost of financing those subsidies (which account for roughly half of the law’s $950 billion price tag over the next decade), it’s still not much consolation for the majority of individual market enrollees.

That’s because more than half the individual market will still end up paying more: "After the application of tax subsidies," the report projects, "59 percent of the individual market will experience an average premium increase of 31 percent."

source: Gruber Report at 26

One factor in the price increase is the addition of new coverage mandates that will make health insurance more expensive: An estimated 40 percent of the Wisconsin’s current individual market enrollees don’t carry coverage that meets ObamaCare’s minimum coverage standards. Thanks to the law, they’ll be required to purchase more expensive coverage.