Free Republic

Health Reform: Before ObamaCare, it would've been hard to find a health plan that combined a huge $6,000 deductible, few in-network doctors, and sky-high premiums. Today, thanks to ObamaCare, it's hard not to.

President Obama is already pointing the finger of blame at greedy insurance companies for what many expect will be huge ObamaCare premium hikes when people go to sign up for their 2016 health insurance.

ObamaCare defenders keep insisting that the law is a huge success while public approval continues to deteriorate, even among Democrats and especially among the uninsured. It's supposed to be the GOP's worst nightmare — President Obama's health care takeover turns out to be a success, proving once and for all that small-government conservatives are delusional. ObamaCare has, we're told, signed up more than expected while avoiding terminal rate shocks. In fact, a new report suggests premiums for "benchmark" Silver plans will actually be lower in many states next year....

Reform: Probably hoping no one would notice, regulators late last week exempted from ObamaCare five U.S. territories where it was failing. Will they do the same once it´s obvious ObamaCare is failing everywhere else? When the geniuses in Congress and the White House were writing the ObamaCare legislation, they made a slight mistake. The law imposed ObamaCare´s guaranteed issue and community rating insurance mandates on the five territories — which have a combined population of more than 4 million — but it exempted them from the individual mandate and didn´t offer any subsidies. Not surprisingly, the insurance markets quickly collapsed...

Health Care: The administration issued new rules last week to spare President Obama more political damage from his phony "keep your doctor" promise. But in so doing, they've set in motion another ObamaCare rate shock. Soon after enrolling in ObamaCare, many people discovered the high cost of believing Obama's promises. Not only were millions required to change plans, but many learned that their "new-and-improved" ObamaCare plans forced them to give up their doctors and hospitals, too. Turns out that insurers — desperate to keep premiums as low as they could in the face of ObamaCare's costly benefit mandates, taxes and...

Repeal: Democrats might think the Frankenstein's monster they've created with ObamaCare can be tamed before the next election by applying a few bandages and stitches. If so, they are badly misinformed. On CNN last week, DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz told Candy Crowley that "Democratic candidates will be able to run on ObamaCare as an advantage leading into the 2014 election." It reminds us of what David Axelrod claimed back in March 2010, when he told Crowley that Democrats would be rewarded in November for enacting ObamaCare. Axelrod was profoundly wrong. Voters severely punished Democrats for ObamaCare, handing control of...

Taxes: Once upon a time, President Obama promised he wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class. Millions of those getting insurance cancellation notices are finding out how fraudulent that promise was, too. Matthew Fleischer, a freelance writer in Los Angeles, recently learned ObamaCare will force him off a plan he likes, and a comparable policy will cost him nearly $800 more next year. "Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act," he wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed. "We just didn't...

I am skeptical of even the smarter writers who have suggested that the California story is good news for health insurance premiums, or proof that Obamacare is already working. The newly released information from California provides them no basis for making such claims. And although the program’s failure is far from certain, there are already good reasons already to think we’re going to see much higher prices across the board for insurance products with little or no improvement compared to what’s already available

Industrial Policy: What if government created an insurance "marketplace" and no one came? As the launch of the ObamaCare insurance exchanges draws near, that could happen — bringing the reform crashing to the ground. The premise of ObamaCare's exchanges was that they would provide individuals and small businesses a choice of many competing health plans. And because the plans all have to provide the same benefits, consumers would be able to shop around for the best deal. But evidence is piling up that the law won't live up to this promise, as insurance companies, small businesses and individuals seek to...