Last week, the state of California claimed that its version of Obamacare’s health insurance exchange would actually reduce premiums. “These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard,” boasted Peter Lee, executive director of the California exchange. But the data that Lee released tells a different story: Obamacare, in fact, will increase individual-market premiums in California by as much as 146 percent.
One of the most serious flaws with Obamacare is that its blizzard of regulations and mandates drives up the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own.
This problem will be especially acute when the law’s main provisions kick in on January 1, 2014, leading many to worry about health insurance “rate shock.”
Lee’s claims that there won’t be rate shock in California were repeated uncritically in some quarters. “Despite the political naysayers,” writes my Forbes colleague Rick Ungar, “the healthcare exchange concept appears to be working very well indeed in states like California.” A bit more analysis would have prevented Rick from falling for California’s sleight-of-hand.
Here’s what happened. Last week, Covered California—the name for the state’s Obamacare-compatible insurance exchange—released the rates that Californians will have to pay to enroll in the exchange.
“The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,” the state said in a press release, “ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.”
More here
I’ll say!
Apples to apples=
1. A 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan on Obamacare’s exchanges
costs an average of $184 a month
The same 25 year old male non-smoker, buying insurance for yourself, the cheapest plan pre-ObamaCare costs $92 a month!
2. A 40-year-old male non-smoker under ObamaCare will be $261 a month.
BUT a 40-year-old male non-smoker pre-ObamaCare is now only $121 a month!
Forbes goes on to add:
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius once said, ”These extraordinary increases are up to 15 times faster than inflation and threaten to make health care unaffordable for hundreds of thousands of Californians, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet in a difficult economy.”
She was NOT talking about ObamaCare.
She was politiking to get rid of all the cheaper medical coverage we had so she could put in ObamaCare!
Now, what would she say about what ObamaCare is doing to prices?
CRICKETS
Remember, if you are NOT low income (Dem voters since the IRS gets to decide) you face a double-whammy: higher taxes to pay for those who do get subsidies, and higher indvidual-market insurance costs for yourself.
No wonder the prices double and more.
@Nan G:
Nan
I really do admire your attention to detail.
From the cited Forbes article:
Apparently we’re supposed to assume that comparing a new $205/mo comprehensive plan with any of the 5 cheapest plans previously available for an average cost of $92/mo is an apples to apples comparison.
And the other dirty little secret the dems don’t want you to know is that there will not be enough doctors to see you no matter how much more your obamacare insurance premium costs you. I already work in three different cities because there aren’t enough neonatologists in the country to see all the patients out there.
Face it… LIBERALS ALWAYS LIE…. case closed!