Covered California 2018 Premiums to Jump 8x Inflation

Covered California announced this week that its 2018 rates will increase about eight times faster than the rate of inflation, as the Obamacare law and the state’s liberal legislature continue to destroy private insurance in California.

Despite the latest United States Department of Labor Consumer Price Index for the month of June estimating that inflation rose by only 1.6 percent over the last twelve months, Covered California, Obamacare for the state, just announced that the average health insurance premiums on the California insurance exchanges would rise by 12.5 percent, or about 7.81 times faster than the rate of inflation.

Covered California’s spiking prices are actually a relative bargain compared to the even worse Obamacare price increases insurers are about to extract across the rest of the nation. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “big insurers in Idaho, West Virginia, South Carolina, Iowa, and Wyoming are seeking to raise premiums by 30 percent or more.”

The economic impact of this only applies to people who actually pay for private health insurance. Those people are so few in number that they do not matter as a voting block.

ACA has created a pool of very costly people who don’t pay anything that is shared only by the very small number of us who are self-employed or have private health care insurance. It is clear we are not a large enough voting block to be of the slightest bit of concern to politicians. Health insurance must either include preferred low risk groups and all others left to something else or EVERYONE. There is no successful in between way to make it work. That means we have either single payer or nothing and a competitive market. Nothing else will work.

I was once in a risk pool with BCBS that I could afford. Now I am in a risk pool that has droves of irresponsible and unfortunate people who don’t pay, are deathly ill and could never have had coverage under any risk pool. I am one of a SHRINKING NUMBER of people who are self-employed or retired and waiting for 65 who are paying a LARGER SHARE of EVER INCREASING COSTS. Once more the independent people and successful people are being pilloried while the interest groups that have enough money to get your attention do.

As for this person given as an example of someone helped by barky care and expanded medicade:

“average chemotherapy cost is $29,000 a month with a 90 percent chance the boy’s tumor will return. Their family utilizes Medicaid to help cover those costs for her son, and she shared with my office that she was concerned about how the healthcare proposals could affect Medicaid. “

It is a shame but he should be allowed to die with some peace and dignity. All medicine is doing is harvesting our money on the back of misplaced emotions. Some say we should not play God. Aren’t we already?

There seems to be thought these days, that everyone’s choice for all manner of end of life care is valid. But the crazy thing in my opinion is they expect their neighbors to pay for those choices. This is why we will eventually have death panels, starting with those using public monies. We simply cannot continue to fund such things, already 20 Trillion in debt and families simply will not say enough is enough when someone else is paying the freight. We will all die, some earlier then others, there has to be some limit on what people expect their neighbors to fund. Public healthcare programs generally are like SSecurity, a tax on the young to make a transfer to the elderly.

“The elderly (age 65+) made up around 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2002, but they consumed 36 percent of total U.S. personal health care expenses.”

We will be making very difficult decisions in the near future of where to invest our limit healthcare dollars. Common sense would say there is a greater benefit to society to keep the young healthy and productive. But elderly folks vote reliably and have learned the art of generational wealth transfer through democracy.

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