“It’s equivalent to taxing the sick,” griped economics Professor Green
Professors and members of the elite Harvard University faculty are complaining that Obamacare has raised the costs of their health insurance. Their complaints echo millions of Americans, with one key difference: unlike average Americans who had no say in the legislative “fix” the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided, professors from Harvard served as advisors to President Obama and Congress and have championed these changes for years.
“It’s equivalent to taxing the sick,” griped economics Professor Green to the NY Times. “I don’t think there’s any government in the world that would tax the sick.”
Comparing the health insurance changes to a pay cut, Mary D. Lewis, a professor specializing in the history of modern France, told the NY Times: “This pay cut will be timed to come at precisely the moment when you are sick, stressed or facing the challenges of being a new parent.”
But aren’t the ACA changes hitting average Americans at times that they, too, are sick or stressed? Isn’t what’s good for the goose, good for the gander (even an ivory-towered gander?)
“The changes in Harvard faculty benefits are parallel to changes that all Americans are seeing,” said a puzzled professor of health economics and policy Meredith B. Rosenthal to the NY Times. “Indeed, they have come to our front door much later than to others.”
Another Harvard health economist echoed Rosenthal: “Harvard is a microcosm of what’s happening in health care in the country,” said David M. Cutler. In fact, “Harvard was and remains a very generous employer.”
But even Harvard “must respond to the national trend of rising health care costs, including some driven by health care reform,” in the form of Obamacare, Harvard’s health care enrollment guide for 2015 points out.
Like the rest of Harvard’s compensation, its new insurance plan is also very generous – more generous than Obamacare is. “Harvard says its plan pays 91 percent of the cost of services for the covered population, while the most popular plans on the exchanges, known as silver plans, pay 70 percent, on average, reflecting their ‘actuarial value,’” reported the NY Times.
In a move that came too late to stop the cost increases, members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University “voted overwhelmingly in November to oppose changes that would require them and thousands of other Harvard employees to pay more for health care,” the NY Times reported.
“It seems that Harvard is trying to save money by shifting costs to sick people,” said professor of sociology Mary C. Waters, a professor of sociology. “I don’t understand why a university with Harvard’s incredible resources would do this. What is the crisis?”
Does she not understand what happens when costs go up? She is a sociology professor, but still…
“Karma is a pre-existing condition not covered by Obamacare.”
The elites do not like the taste of the medicine they prescribed to the masses, and as Joel Polliak from Breitbart tweeted: