By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--July 6, 2015
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Health insurance companies around the country are seeking rate increases of 20 percent to 40 percent or more, saying their new customers under the Affordable Care Act turned out to be sicker than expected. Federal officials say they are determined to see that the requests are scaled back. Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans — market leaders in many states — are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee and 54 percent in Minnesota, according to documents posted online by the federal government and state insurance commissioners and interviews with insurance executives.Huh. That's weird. I thought ObamaCare was supposed to lower rates across the board. Didn't the President promise that the average household would see their premiums decline by something on the order of $2500.00? Certainly the New York Times must be shocked to discover that these claims were bald-faced lies, and that conservatives were right all along. Oh Grey Lady, pray tell. Where did our promised savings go?
The Oregon insurance commissioner, Laura N. Cali, has just approved 2016 rate increases for companies that cover more than 220,000 people. Moda Health Plan, which has the largest enrollment in the state, received a 25 percent increase, and the second-largest plan, LifeWise, received a 33 percent increase. Jesse Ellis O’Brien, a health advocate at the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, said: “Rate increases will be bigger in 2016 than they have been for years and years and will have a profound effect on consumers here. Some may start wondering if insurance is affordable or if it’s worth the money.” President Obama, on a trip to Tennessee this week, said that consumers should put pressure on state insurance regulators to scrutinize the proposed rate increases. If commissioners do their job and actively review rates, he said, “my expectation is that they’ll come in significantly lower than what’s being requested.”Note that Obama's no longer trying to pretend there will be any savings at all. He's completely abandoned the $2500 figure. Now he's simply pretending that he's doing everything in his power to lower the size of the increases. ...But they're still going to be increases. This, of course, was the goal all along: Implement an unsustainable cash-starved system so that it will eventually collapse or the quality of care becomes so intolerable that people clamor for its elimination. Then the statist progs infesting Washington can replace it with single payer. Anyone acting like rate hikes are a surprise is just playing their part in a plan that was famously extolled by Barney Frank and Harry Reid. Your financial pain is exactly what they wanted.
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