Free Republic

Health Reform: Looks like ObamaCare premiums will skyrocket for many next year. So what do Democrats propose? New insurance mandates that will drive premiums up even higher. Which one is the stupid party again?

The “Affordable” Care Act may be looking for a new name in the near future. As Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are reporting, the next round of health care premium cost adjustments are coming down the pike, and you’ll never guess where things are heading. Okay… you probably guessed already. The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Obamacare rates are about to shoot up, in some cases as much as 40%. The rate increases requested by insurance carriers vary state by state, but the overall picture is bad.“In New Mexico, market leader Health Care Service Corp....

President Obama has talked a lot in recent months about how health care inflation has moderated in recent years, and he always manages to credit ObamaCare for the result. But there is rampant inflation in one part of the health care system, and ironically enough it involves ObamaCare premiums.

Roberta and Curtis Campbell typically look forward to tax time. Most years, they receive a refund – a little extra cash to pay off credit card bills. But this year the California couple got a shock: According to their tax preparer, they owe the IRS more than $6,000. That’s the money the Campbells received from the federal government last year to make their Obamacare health coverage more affordable. Roberta, unemployed when she signed up for the plan, got a job halfway through the year and Curtis found full-time work. The couple’s total yearly income became too high to qualify for...

**SNIP** Given that the authors of Obamacare had a very specific idea in mind for what constitutes affordable insurance, the American Health Policy Institute is out with a new study that asks a very interesting question: Does Obamacare meet its own standards for affordability? The answer is no. Here are a couple of the key findings from AHPI's study: Even now, under the Affordable Care Act’s own definition, over 105 million Americans will find plans in the ACA’s [Affordable Care Act's] public exchanges to be “unaffordable” when both premiums and deductibles are taken into account. Over 13 million employees with...

When it became obvious a couple of years ago that Obamacare would accelerate health care inflation, the law’s boosters began claiming that cost control was never its primary goal. PPACA’s promoters had previously promised that it would reduce annual health care expenses by $2,500 per family while improving access and quality of care. But the facts forced them to abandon that pledge and adopt a safer party line. As expressed by the New York Times, the new story goes thus: “At its most basic level, the Affordable Care Act was intended to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance.”...

Although the Affordable Care Act has not led to soaring insurance costs, as many critics claimed it would, the law hasn't provided much relief to American workers either, according to a new study of employer-provided health benefits. Workers continue to be squeezed by rising insurance costs, eroding benefits and stagnant wages, the report from the nonproNationwide, the average contribution an employee made to an insurance premium in 2013 and the average deductible together represented 9.6% of the median income of American households with members under age 65. That is up from 8.4% in 2010 and nearly double the 5.3% that...

Obamacare is going to kill you. Or one of your kids. Or one of your parents. Someone in your family is going to die from Obamacare. You can bet on it. You can bet your life on it. There are many things in medicine that are in a state of flux because of Obamacare. Obamacare is the name given to the most inappropriately termed "Affordable Care Act." There is nothing about Obamacare that makes care affordable. Obamacare has made care much more unaffordable. What it has done is make healthcare appear to be affordable because of subsidized premiums. The problem...

link only: http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2015/01/01/middle-class-workers-struggle-to-pay-for-care-despite-insurance/19841235/

County officials are starting to feel the pain of Obamacare. The Board of Commissioners has learned the various fees levied on large employers by the Affordable Care Act will cost the county nearly $1.5 million for 2014. In a memo to the commissioners, county Risk and Insurance Manager John Anderson said the fees are based on the county’s nearly 3,000 full-time employees who receive health care benefits. The largest cost, by far, is a 2.5 percent fee tacked onto health insurance premiums to help pay for the ACA’s online insurance exchanges and overall implementation costs. The first year price tag:...

The administration is trying to preempt Obamacare sticker shock in 2015 by pleading with Americans to shop around in the marketplaces instead of automatically re-enrolling in the health plans they chose last year. Officials said Thursday those who don’t look around and compare plans during open enrollment could see their costs rise because the so-called benchmark plans are more expensive this year.But the Health and Human Services Department said there are more insurers offering more plans this year, meaning that in most states consumers can choose from three or more issuers. And HHS said those options mean most consumers who...

Americans are inveterate tinkerers — a trait commented on by observers from de Tocqueville to Winston Churchill. That’s why it’s not surprising that the bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would want to keep tweaking Obamacare. Mind you, it’s not so much because they think they can perfect the law. Rather, they keep tweaking the law in order to keep the American people from brandishing pitchforks and coming to Washington to tar and feather them and ride them out of town on a rail. Self-preservation can be a marvelous motivating factor. The geniuses who brought us the...

Many of the 7 million consumers who got insurance under President Barack Obama's health care law will see their premiums rise next year unless they switch to another plan, independent analysts said as the government released details Friday. The Health and Human Services department released a massive computer file of 2015 premiums one day ahead of the start of open enrollment. Those numbers will take time to fully analyze. ,,,,, But there is a catch if you are already a customer: Your plan may no longer be the lost-cost benchmark in your community. In that case, you'll pay more unless...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance bought under the Affordable Care Act could face substantial price increases next year — in some cases as much as 20 percent — unless they switch plans. The data became available just hours before the health insurance marketplace was to open to buyers seeking insurance for 2015. An analysis of the data by The New York Times suggests that although consumers will often be able to find new health plans with prices comparable to those they now pay, the situation varies greatly from state...

A third video has surfaced of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber bragging about pulling the wool over the eyes of the American public in order to help implement Obamacare. “It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012. He was discussing what is known as the Cadillac tax and how it came into being.

... feast your eyes on all this about 'Who is Jonathan Gruber'!

For the first time in modern history, the Obama administration has forced insurance companies to withhold 2015 prices until after the election. So he can shield Democrats. In the past, new prices were announced 60 days before the first day of the year. Not this year. Warner Todd Huston reported: Barack Obama is again playing political games with our health insurance industry and has turned in another underhanded move against it by forcing insurance carriers, brokers and agents to withhold their 2015 prices until after the 2014 midterm elections are over all so that the news of higher prices won’t...

As someone who was forced into Covered California (CC) last year when Aetna, my long-time and excellent healthcare insurer, exited California’s individual market, I am painfully aware of the technical incompetence of the CC website. This year, the CC website has been down for the last two weeks, even though CC renewals are due by November 15th. As someone who had their monthly healthcare premium jacked-up by 71% from $780 a month in 2013 with Aetna to $1,336 with Covered California in 2014, it seems convenient the website outage is hiding the huge premium increases many new Covered Californians are...

In its first year, Obamacare hiked health insurance premiums by up to 78 percent, according to a new analysis comparing insurance costs before and after Obamacare. HealthPocket, a nonpartisan health insurance research company, analyzed government data on individual health insurance premiums in the 2013 market before Obamacare reforms and 2014′s Obamacare exchanges, and the results are in: Average premiums are higher for all ages– far above the norm for annual increases. Young customers have been hurt the worst by Obamacare– a big potential problem for the Obama administration, which failed to attract enough young and healthy customers during the first...

Time to inject another set of data points into the "Obamacare is working well in the real world" debate. The president and his loyalists insist that their signature law is working as intended. The general public -- yet again -- disagrees, according to a new poll from Politico. A plurality believes the quality of their care will deteriorate under Obamacare (perhaps due to access shock, doctor shortages, and government rationing decisions), while less than one-in-five expect improved care. On costs, a pitiful seven percent believe the 'Affordable' Care Act will reduce the amount of money they'll personally pay will decrease...