Scary news about ObamaCare

OK, I'll admit that I was never in favor of ObamaCare. I was sad that the U.S. Congress backed such a scheme. But it's been eyeopening to see what has been reported lately about it. Reports are coming out that are devastating about the impact of this act.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a recent such study. It concluded up to 78 million Americans would lose their current health coverage as employers stopped offering insurance because of President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

But I thought Obama had assured us this wouldn't happen. The report contradicted Mr. Obama's frequent pledge that under his reform, "if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan."

This wasn't the only negative report. In May 2010, former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin concluded that employers would drop coverage for about 35 million Americans because of ObamaCare. A month later, in June 2010, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) came up with a far higher estimate--between 87 million to 117 million. And last November, an analyst told health-insurance company executives that 80 million to 100 million people might lose their employer-provided health insurance.

Why will this happen? It's so simple even I can understand the economics behind it. The Journal reports that, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's Employer Health Benefits 2010 Annual Survey, the annual premium for an average policy last year was $5,049 for a single worker, with the company picking up roughly $4,150 and the employee the rest. For a family of four, the total cost was $13,770, with the company picking up $9,773.

Now let's see what happens when you factor in ObamaCare. Under its provisions, , businesses can stop providing health-care coverage, paying a $2,000 per-worker fine instead. For small businesses, the trade-off is even more attractive: They are given a pass on the first 50 workers.

Workers losing coverage will be moved into the "exchange," a government-run marketplace to buy health plans. Those whose insurance costs were more than a specified share of their income (9.5% in 2014) could get subsidies. The exchange starts in 2014 and is fully operational by 2016.

So it's pretty obvious what will happen. It will be extremely attractive for companies to dump the increasingly more expensive coverage and pay a lesser fine. There will be huge ramifications for the country's finances if more workers lose coverage than was estimated.

The original estimates were expensive enough under Obama's scheme. The CBO and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation predicted that 24 million workers would be covered by the exchange. Of these, nine million to 11 million would lose their employer-provided coverage, offset by six million to seven million who would be getting employer-provided insurance, for a net of three million workers losing company-sponsored coverage. The CBO said the exchanges would cost $511 billion over ObamaCare's first decade.

But what if these recent estimates are closer to the truth with far more people dumped into the exchange than originally estimated? Costs from the increased subsidies will explode.

If between 78 million and 87 million people are moved into the exchange, the tab could more than triple. You do the math--$511 billion times 3. I'll wait . . . But it gets worse. If 117 million people were dumped into the exchange, ObamaCare would cost nearly $2 trillion more than expected in the first decade alone. Much of this extra expense would come from workers losing their employer-sponsored insurance.

It's one thing to merrily go along during great economic times, lavishing money here and there. But we don't live in such times. We are now, to our horror, finding out how harmful this measure is. More Americans are realizing that unless repealed, ObamaCare will sink America in a sea of red ink. This helps explain why the nation has turned so hard against it—and against its author whose slippery pledges so misled us. I don't plan on gloating. Instead, I will work hard to see this current administration does no more damage to our economy after 2012.