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Tag: Death Spirals

Obamacare Premiums Are Going To “Skyrocket”? Forget About It.

Being against Obamacare has been the keystone, the capstone, the mighty sledgehammer, the massive metaphor of your choice for the right for five years now. They couldn’t stop it from being passed. They couldn’t stop it at the Supreme Court.

They weren’t able to choke it off by “defunding” it. They rejoiced at the rubber-meets-the-sky rollout of Healthcare.gov, but then the kinks got worked out of that.They railed at the administration using discretionary powers built into the law to help it work better. Every horror story of Obamacare ruining people’s lives they came up with turned out to be false.

Almost all of the people cynically cancelled by the insurance companies as a way to sell them more expensive insurance got insured again fairly quickly. Then 7 million people signed up on the exchanges, and altogether some 10 million formerly uninsured people now have medical coverage.

But the right still needs to call it a “train wreck.” The magic mantra has to work for them. Just this morning, here’s a Republican Congressman saying that we have to cut Food Stamps because: Obamacare. Say that again slowly?

It’s getting harder and harder on the right to come up with new ways to say it isn’t working when it actually seems to be working. I have to hand it to them, though: Those spin factories are filled with hard-working creative people. Get to work early, stay late, trash Obamacare. Hey, it’s a living.

So what’s the latest? This fall, Obamacare premiums are going to “skyrocket”!

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Are Death Spirals Real? Has Anybody Ever Seen One?

A THCB reader in Virginia writes:

“As a small business owner, I’ve been following the arguments about Obamacare with a mixture of amusement and total horror. Just when you thought Washington couldn’t screw things up any worse, they find new and creative ways to do exactly that.

My question concerns the phenomenon of the “death spiral” the terrifying sounding scenario that observers predict will occur if not enough people buy insurance. According to this theory, if not enough people buy health insurance, insurers will be forced to abandon unprofitable markets.  As a business owner myself, this argument resonates. But I still don’t get it. This seems like common sense.

It is certainly true that if nobody buys my goods and services, my business will go into a “death spiral.” I will no longer be able to make a living selling my widgets. I will be forced to invent a new widget. Or go get a new job. This is like my kid saying if he doesn’t to play more Call of Duty IV he will go into an “entertainment death spiral” and be unable to do his homework ever again or be a productive member of society.

Or McDonalds warning that if too many people take up vegetarianism, its business will go into a horrible “hamburger death spiral.” So what evidence do we have? I need documentation. Like, let’s say, a picture. Or a YouTube clip.

Seriously, when has this happened? Otherwise, the death spiral thing sounds like really good economic spin to me …”

assetto corsa mods