The New York Times had a legend and a myth gracing its front page yesterday. The legend: Yankee pitcher Mariano Rivera. The myth: a cover story declaring “Health Plan Cost for New Yorkers Set To Fall 50 Percent” thanks to ObamaCare.
The headline is meant to spread cheer about the law’s implementation next year, but it’s woefully misleading.
The news applies only to New Yorkers who buy insurance on their own rather than through their work. Just 17,000 New Yorkers now buy insurance this way out of the 2.3 million insured statewide. That’s just 0.6 percent of insured New Yorkers.
And the 50 percent drop is itself questionable: A Deloitte study this year predicts a 13.9 percent fall in premium costs; the Urban Institute expects a 13.5 percent drop. But while the cost of premiums may fall here, it’s less because of any merits of ObamaCare than because premiums in the individual market are already high because of years and years of over-regulation.
The kicker comes with the admission that “while the rates will fall over all, apples-to-apples comparisons are impossible from this year to next because all of the plans are essentially new insurance products.” Which strikes us as another way of saying, everything you’ve read up to now is pure speculation.
Only recently, a desperate White House was asking Hollywood and the NFL’s help in selling ObamaCare to the public. While that hasn’t panned out, clearly they’ve found the folks willing to hype.