Rate Shock: In California, Obamacare To Increase Individual Health Insurance Premiums By 64-146%

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Forbes:

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.

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Here comes the Obamacare bomb...

[Valin]

Here comes the Obamacare bomb...

Bomb! What Bomb? Everything is going just....swimmingly.

 

 

 

Via Meadia: ACA Supporters Spin Obamacare Disaster into Good News by Cooking the Books

5/31/13

 

The dominos keep falling on the California ACA story. Last week the state released official estimates about the cost of premiums under Obamacare, and the laws supporters were jubilant.

 

One the one hand, wonks like *Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein were happy that the estimates came in lowerin some cases, much lowerthan the rates originally predicted by the Congressional Budget Office when the law was passing through Congress. On the other hand, California itself claimed that the new rates were equal to or cheaper than the rates Californians currently paid.

 

The laws wonky supporters quickly qualified their excitement by noting that results might not be replicable in other states. Moreover, significant tradeoffs had to be made to keep prices down.

 

(Snip)

 

Some Democrats know that Obamacare is a mess and hope that it drives the country toward single payer, UK-style health insurance. Were hoping that the pain and mess of Obamacare will reduce public confidence in the ability of wonks to micromanage something as complex as the American health care system, and will encourage reforms that can harness the power of technological progress, enlightened consumer self interest, and economic competition to make American health care better, cheaper and more user-friendly from year to year to year.

 

 

 

 

* Certified Licensed Smart Guys, so never ever to be doubted.