How Obamacare will hurt you

The Wall Street Journal this morning has an explanation of how Obamacare will negatively affect great numbers of Americans. Summary: “In total, it appears that there will be 30 million to 40 million people damaged in some fashion by the Affordable Care Act—more than one in 10 Americans.”

Writer Daniel Kessler, a Stanford professor of business and law, offers a prediction: “When that reality becomes clearer, the law is going to start losing its friends in the media, who are inclined to support the president and his initiatives. We’ll hear about innocent victims who saw their premiums skyrocket, who were barred from seeing their usual doctor, who had their hours cut or lost their insurance entirely—all thanks to the faceless bureaucracy administering a federal law.”

Maybe: We’ll see what happens when the supposedly unstoppable force, the press, hits the immovable rock of ideology. Kessler writes that “single adults age 21-29 earning 300% to 400% of the federal poverty level will be hit with an increase of 46% even after premium assistance from tax credits.” The 2013 federal poverty guideline for a single person is $11,490, so we’re talking $34,000 to $46,000, which hits the pay levels of lots of journalists.

Small-group premiums are likely to increase by 13 to 23 percent on average. Ten million part-timers who now work 30-34 hours per week will find themselves working 29, because employers aren’t subject to tax penalties for employees who work fewer than 30 hours per week. And so on, with successive waves of unhappiness.

My prediction: Many in the mainstream press will complain, and they’ll say the problem is not too much federal involvement in healthcare but too little: If only we had a single-payer system …