On Thursday, CNN's Carol Costello had this snarky tweet [1] for Republicans: "House votes to delay Obamacare. Just as it has unsuccessfully done 35 times." Then she linked to a CNN Money article [2] claiming that Obamacare will cut health care costs for New Yorkers in half.
President Obama used this exact same talking point on Friday to bolster
his law. Costello claimed it was "buried in all the negative news" on
Obamacare -- although she's only reported one negative story on the
health care law in the last month -- yet the positive news she touted
also came with a glaring caveat.
Buried deep in the CNN Money article is the context that New York will likely be an anomaly in the drop in health care costs. The state had already implemented many of the regulations found in Obamacare, and the results were higher premium costs and a smaller pool of customers:
"New York is one of the few that already required many of the benefits of Obamacare, which left its individual market filled with a small pool of sicker residents and very high costs. Only 17,000 New Yorkers buy their own insurance right now, while 2.6 million people lack coverage.
As National Review's Avik Roy argues in Forbes [3], New York's premiums were high to begin with and have "nowhere to go but down" under Obamacare, since the individual mandate will force many uninsured healthy persons back into the state's insurance market.
He adds that "New York's premiums will remain among the costliest in the nation, after Obamacare becomes fully operational."
-- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center