Michael Barone: How ObamaCare Misreads America

The Washington elites who designed the law must be bewildered: Why doesn't everyone behave as they do?

Click here to read this WSJ article. By Michael Barone, 2-3-14. Excerpts:

"only 11% of those who bought new coverage between November 2013 and January 2014 were previously uninsured.

Two small insurance companies told Wall Street Journal reporters for a Jan. 17 article that only 25% and 35% of those purchasing their policies were previously uninsured. Larger insurers don't yet have numbers, but it seems that far fewer of the uninsured than expected are signing up. The latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll reported that only 24% of uninsured under 65 had a favorable view of ObamaCare while 47% had an unfavorable view.

One reason may be that ObamaCare requires policies to cover not just the expenses of catastrophic illness—the sort of thing auto and home insurance policies cover—but routine medical expenses and procedures that many individuals will not need. To that extent ObamaCare policies are not insurance but prepayment of routine expenses."

" In 2008 the state government [oregon], with limited Medicaid funds, held a lottery to determine which people who were eligible for Medicaid would be enrolled. The result was an unusual randomized control trial of similarly motivated people with and without insurance. The results, reported in the May 2013 New England Journal of Medicine, were that after two years there was no significant difference between insured and uninsured in blood-sugar level, blood pressure and cholesterol levels"

"the Oregon health study showed that those with Medicaid were 40% more likely to go to emergency rooms than those without insurance."

"sharp differences in behavior between the upper (in education and income) 20% and the bottom 30% of white Americans.

The upper group has low rates of divorce and single parenthood and high rates of what Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam calls social connectedness. They belong to voluntary associations and churches; they vote and follow public-policy debates. They tend to be connected, engaged and conscientious. The lower (income and education) group has high rates of divorce and single parenthood and low rates of social connectedness. They tend to be disconnected and disengaged, and sometimes heedless"

"the Scandinavian countries have homogeneous populations with high levels of trust, conscientiousness and social connectedness. It is not a coincidence that in the two states with the highest levels of the social connectedness Mr. Putnam described, North Dakota and Minnesota, most people are of Scandinavian or German descent."