Obama: Regulators will never approve those massive health premium increases; Regulators: APPROVED

The argument has been ever-present, where ObamaCare is concerned, that mandating generous benefits while forbidding insurers from considering factors like pre-existing conditions, could only result in one thing: Sky-high, jacked up premiums for everyone. It's simple economics. You can't artificially heighten demand by forcing everyone to buy, while also mandating a gold standard in coverage, and not see prices soar. But Barack Obama thinks the regulatory state can do what the stone-cold laws of the market cannot. So when insurers earlier this year began submitting their rate increase requests to state regulators - and the numbers were pretty frightening - Obama waved it off as mere posturing and assured everyone that what regulators would actually approve would be nothing of the sort.

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At a July town hall in Nashville, Tenn., President Barack Obama played down fears of a spike in health insurance premiums in his signature health law's third year. "My expectation is that they'll come in significantly lower than what's being requested," he said, saying Tennesseans had to work to ensure the state's insurance commissioner "does their job in not just passively reviewing the rates, but really asking, 'OK, what is it that you are looking for here? Why would you need very high premiums?'" That commissioner, Julie Mix McPeak, answered on Friday by greenlighting the full 36.3% increase sought by the biggest health plan in the state, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. She said the insurer demonstrated the hefty increase for 2016 was needed to cover higher-than-expected claims from sick people who signed up for individual policies in the first two years of the Affordable Care Act. Several regulators around the country agree with her, and have approved all or most of the big premium increases sought by the largest health plans in their states for the new sign-up season that begins Nov. 1.

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I bolded the passage about "higher-than-expected" claims because it's hilarious in what it demonstrates about the complete lack of any understanding on the part of the people who passed this turkey. You subsidize premiums and go out and practically beg people to take advantage. You forbid the insurers from turning anyone away on the basis of their already being sick. So fine, the sick people sign up and get covered. What exactly did you think was going to happen? You don't think sick people go to the doctor more often than everyone else? You don't think they run up bills for doctor's office visits, prescriptions, lab tests, ER visits . . . what do you think sick people do? Of course they're going to make more claims - a lot more - and since the insurers aren't allowed to charge them any more than everyone else, the only option is to jack premiums for everyone. Oh, by the way, since everyone is forced to buy insurance, those left sucking up the costs have no option of going off the health insurance grid in favor of self-pay, Health Savings Accounts or catastrophic-only coverage - all of which make much more sense than relying on mainstream health insurance. Think about it like this: Who gets their furniture from Aaron's Rent-A-Center? People who can't afford to buy any. They know it's a rip over the long term (or they should), but with their cash flow, it's the only way they think they can get furniture. Health insurance is like that. It's a complete rip-off, but a lot of people think it's the only way they can afford to go to the doctor. The difference is that the government doesn't force people who can afford to buy furniture with their own money to rent from Aaron's. They do force people who could pay their own doctor bills to buy health insurance, and they don't grant them any relief from covering the costs of those who consume health care services at a stratospherically high rate. Regulators are approving these huge premium increases because, contrary to what Obama suggests, the costs totally justify them. And the reason the costs are so high is that ObamaCare manipulates the working of the system to make it easy for some people to run up costs that by law will have to be covered by others. This is the way ObamaCare was designed to work. The insurers know that when they backed it. They figured they get a huge influx of new customers and they'd be able to sell regulators on the premium increases they would need to cover it. If Obama didn't understand this, then he's a fool. If he did, then he's a liar. Meanwhile, Obama goes around bragging about the number of people who now have coverage, as if that's some sort of triumph. It's anything but. The more people who let themselves get herded into this racket, the more people who are forced to pay soaring premiums they never would have faced under the old system - which was far from perfect (and which we should not go back to when ObamaCare is repealed), but was still a lot better than this monstrosity.

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