Who Are Those Who Lose Health Insurance Under Obamacare?

Everyone is all concerned about the small portion of the public that can no longer keep their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.  Who are these poor souls?  Well first of all they are people who have individual health insurance (not through their employer) and have gotten it since 2010 (and hence are not grandfathered).  A TPM reader is a typical member of this group.

“I thought I’d write in and give you my perspective as a 3-percenter. However, I suspect that I belong to a smaller subset of the 3%, that being people who find it appallingly self-indulgent and shamefully self-pitying to think of ourselves as losers.

Having insurance, even crappy insurance, in the individual market means we are almost by definition, healthy and relatively young. If we were not, we wouldn’t be able to get coverage of any kind in the non-group market. If our ACA-compliant replacement policy costs us more, it’s likely because we’re too affluent to qualify for subsidies.

It takes a remarkable degree of self-absorption and sense of self-entitlement to be healthy, young(ish) and affluent—and yet consider oneself a “loser.” It’s a label I reject out of shame (no matter how much the lazy, superficial MSM want to fixate on me and my “plight”) NOT because there’s anything shameful about being a loser; the shame is in thinking oneself a loser when one is actually fortunate.”

No question, Obama blundered when he said that everyone would be able to keep their health insurance.  But don’t count me with those who think he blundered further (forced by weak-kneed Congressional Democrats) when he gave in on this issue to help among the most fortunate members of the health insurance marketplace.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.