How affordable is ObamaCare?

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill have tried to sell ObamaCare as a way to make health insurance more affordable for all Americans, but does it deliver? The AP sounded skeptical on Sunday, when they analyzed the various proposals, noting a number of ways in which costs will escalate for consumers outside of Congressional sales pitches. The article also links a handy tool from the Kaiser Family Foundation, generally supportive of health-care reform, that allows consumers to get an idea of what ObamaCare will cost them individually and as families:

A family of four headed by a 45-year-old making $63,000 a year is in the middle of the middle class. But that family would pay $7,110 to buy its own health insurance under the plan from the committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

The family would get a tax credit of $3,970 to help pay for a policy worth $11,080. But the balance due — $7,110 — is real money. Maybe it’s less than the rent, but it’s probably more than a car loan payment.

Kaiser’s calculator doesn’t take into account co-payments and deductibles that could add hundreds of dollars, even several thousand, to a family’s total medical expenses. A Congressional Budget Office analysis estimates total expenses could average 20 percent of income for some families by 2016.

The issue of affordability “has been lurking in the background and is nowhere near resolved yet,” said Kaiser’s president, Drew Altman. “It’s tricky because it doesn’t take a lot of people to make affordability a political problem. It just takes some very visible and understandable cases.”