There are plenty of reasons why people oppose the PPACA (That’s “Obamacare”) ranging from the highly intelligent to the stupid. (Similar to the reasons why people support the PPACA) I can give you my reasons which are obviously on the highly intelligent side of this.

I oppose it because it forces you to pay for more healthcare than you need and it forces you to pay for healthcare through insurance even when not sensible. This ends up raising the cost of healthcare.

Here is an example: birth control mechanisms. (Let’s set aside their therapeutic use for a moment which is a completely different issue) Your consumption of birth control isn’t linked to a “risk”. It’s a regular expected expense. In fact, the birth control pill is something you have to take every single day. You can’t get further away from “risk” than that. And yet, the Obama healthcare plan mandates that your health insurance (which you are required to carry) must cover birth control. If it does not, you will have to pay a penalty. (or tax if John Roberts happens to be reading)

Now, you might say, who cares? Women having birth control is good. Sure it is. But you have to wonder about the incentives. Having birth control covered by health insurance means you don’t pay full price at the point of purchase. All other things equal, that pushes you towards the higher priced version whether it is worth the higher price or not. That means birth control is more expensive than it otherwise would have been. And of course, you do pay full price because that means premiums and/or taxes go up to compensate. That’s just one of many such products which are not risk-related but which the Obama healthcare plan forces you to purchase bundled with your insurance.

Now, before I’m accused of being some retrograde opposed to women being able to chose when they have kids, I am not. I think it’s a jolly-good thing that women have access to birth control pills. But I would rather the price of birth control not be artificially inflated just so the Democrats can score cheap political points with women voters.

Then you have the more general issue of younger folks. People in their 20s. People in their 20s often do not buy any health insurance, or they buy a catastrophic care plan. (in case they get hit by a bus or something similar happens) That makes a lot of sense. People in that age group are highly unlikely to need the full array of medical services that somebody older might need. Also, those people don’t have that much money to spend on health insurance. (When we were in our early 20s, my wife and I purchased a bare-bones $~100/month plan for instance) Such plans are not allowed under the PPACA. (Well, you can have them if you are willing to pay the penalty on top of that.) In fact, the current average healthcare expenditure of somebody in their 20s is significantly lower than the new required plans will cost. Let me be clear on that one: Under the PPACA, people in their 20s must spend more on insurance plans than they currently spend on healthcare.

Now, somebody is bound to jump in and point out that this is all BS because the PPACA also provides subsidies. So even if the true cost of healthcare for a 20-year old will go up, if the 20-year old is poor, they will get subsidized and so they won’t pay as much and too bad for the richer 20-year olds, they can afford it. (Too bad also for everyone when the total price of healthcare goes up.) But that’s an inconsequential argument. The subsidies are completely separate from the individual mandate and community rating. The PPACA could have simply said: we know it’s hard for poor people to afford healthcare. Here is a voucher. Go buy the health insurance you need. Or expanded medicaid. Or any number of schemes to allow people who need insurance to get it without creating all of those perverse effects in the healthcare market. But instead, they went with a plan that had some good parts, but whose central provision is a terrible idea. That’s why I oppose the PPACA. (There is more, but I have to do some work.)