More Unintended Consequences from PPACA

Decision makers and analysts across the country are mesmerized by the complexities of implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), aka Obamacre. The news media is also fixated on the fall-out from the new law. Human resource managers still don’t know how they are going to play on the revamped field for health care. Will they even continue to offer coverage or choose to pay the low penalties, in effect defaulting to government exchanges and subsidies? This means they have their eyes off the ball, off the real problem with U.S. health care — the escalating costs. One executive of a small Wisconsin manufacturing company told me this week that his premiums were hiked 49% for his 80 workers. And his firm did not have an unusual year for health incidents. More typically, premium increases have ranged between 10% and 20%. It’s these run-away costs that Obamacare laid nary a glove on. Indeed, his top-down concoction will add points of inflation to the national bill. Instead of looking for innovative ways to change the model of how health care is delivered, business and organization managers are attending a plethora of seminars on how to cope with the mind boggling bill out of Washington D.C. The regulations are just beginning to unfold.  The lack of  focus on the continuing hyper-inflation in health costs/prices/premiums is an unintended consequence of the new law.