Color all of us who opposed ObamaCare shocked:
Health insurers say they plan to raise premiums for some Americans as a direct result of the health overhaul in coming weeks, complicating Democrats’ efforts to trumpet their signature achievement before the midterm elections.
Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1% and 9% to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators.
These and other insurers say Congress’s landmark refashioning of U.S. health coverage, which passed in March after a brutal fight, is causing them to pass on more costs to consumers than Democrats predicted.
The rate increases largely apply to policies for individuals and small businesses and don’t include people covered by a big employer or Medicare.
Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Being an individual is passe. Join the collective, and all will be well!
About 9% of Americans buy coverage through the individual market, according to the Census Bureau, and roughly one-fifth of people who get coverage through their employer work at companies with 50 or fewer employees, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. People in both groups are likely to feel the effects of the proposed increases, even as they see new benefits under the law, such as the elimination of lifetime and certain annual coverage caps.
Many carriers also are seeking additional rate increases that they say they need to cover rising medical costs. As a result, some consumers could face total premium increases of more than 20%.
[…]
The rate increases are a dose of troubling news for Democrats just weeks before an election in which they are at risk of losing their majority in the House and possibly the Senate.
In addition to pledging that the law would restrain increases in Americans’ insurance premiums, Democrats front-loaded the legislation with early provisions they hoped would boost public support. Those include letting children stay on their parents’ insurance policies until age 26, eliminating co-payments for preventive care and barring insurers from denying policies to children with pre-existing conditions, plus the elimination of the coverage caps.
Weeks before the election, insurance companies began telling state regulators it is those very provisions that are forcing them to increase their rates.
[…]
The White House says insurers are using the law as an excuse to raise rates and predicts that state regulators will block some of the large increases.
“I would have real deep concerns that the kinds of rate increases that you’re quoting… are justified,” said Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House’s top health official. She said that for insurers, raising rates was “already their modus operandi before the bill” passed. “We believe consumers will see through this,” she said.
[…]
The industry contends its increases are justified. “Anytime you add a benefit, there are increased costs,” said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s lobbying group.
[…]
Democrats had hoped to sell the bill in the fall elections. But in recent weeks, some Democrats who voted for the bill have shied away from advertising that fact, while the handful of House Democrats who cast “no” votes see it as a potential boost to their re-election bids.
“I think it’s a question of short term versus long term,” said North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, a Democrat up for re-election in 2012. “Thankfully we’re seeing people get more coverage and protections than they’ve ever had before. But until we see the medical-cost inflation affected, you’re likely to see rate increases as long as they are not excessive and in violation of the law.”
So, wait. You mean that providing free health care costs money?
But how can that be? I mean, it’s called free, isn’t it? And by merely asserting it is so — and getting enough people to share that assertion — it is so.
At least, that’s how I thought the contingency of truth touted by leftist epistemologies are supposed to work.
Someone should tell reality it has no right stepping in to muck up the works this way…
Previously the administration had calculated that the batch of changes taking effect this fall would raise premiums no more than 1% to 2%, on average.
The administration has predicted all sorts of things which didn’t come out favorably for them. It’s almost as if their calculations are based on the best possible outcome, one that has been blessed by fairies and unicorns.
Damned right-wing fascist Reality. I blame Faux Noise.
I believe it was “unicorns shitting Skittles”, cranky.
o_O
Spiny, the skittle-shitting unicorns were what we were supposed to get. The unicorns that bless are different in some way I don’t feel like explaining because I cannot.
Previously the administration had calculated that the batch of changes taking effect this fall would raise premiums no more than 1% to 2%, on average.
Oops. Mistakes were made.
Who could have possibly known that adding more services and lowering co-pays would cost more money? There are obviously too many variables
I’m sure Bush and the Republicans are to blame for this as well.
Ah, I see.
I was self-employed for 5 years, so I had my own private medical coverage. For the first 3 years, I paid $54 per month. The state of Oklahoma passed some mandates and bumped it up to $63 for a year and a half, then about a year ago they passed some more crap and it went up to $82.
Obamacare kicked in July 1, 2010, and I got a notice from my insurance company that my premiums were going from $82 to $151.
My math sucks. Is that 1% or 2%?
Oh, to finish my story – I joined a company a few months ago, but kept my private insurance b/c I figured Obamacare would hose their coverage. So, now I’ve canceled my private coverage and joined the company plan. My over/under for losing that is April 2011, because my company’s fiscal year starts in June 2011.
“This was not the ObamaCare I knew.”
Ba-da-bump bump bump
Another one goes under the bus!
one or two percent short of 100%
My math sucks. Is that 1% or 2%?
It’s new math, Ella.
But I was told there would be no math on this blog.
Ah yes, force the companies to raise rates, then deny them the rate increases. The company slowly bleeds to death, and presto change-o, OBambiCare has another bolus of reluctant clients.
Sic transit gloria mundi – Tuesday is usually worse.
– Companies will simply stop offering any services they can’t turn a profit on, and if they pass legislation outlawing cherry picked services the companies will turn to other area’s of insurance, so what they will do is slowly but surely eliminate certain coverages altogether.
– Instead of more people having lower cost coverage, less people will have less services for higher costs.
– Hellofajob Barry!
If you want to keep your current insurance, it will not be effected by this legislation. How many times should that be repeated between now and November?
JD, I am not sure we will hear one word about it… I amnot sure such lies could be told without even the original proponents bursting into laughter with a “you got me” look on their faces.
It’s time and past time to break out the tar and feathers.
LtC John – it would probably be too much to expect Team R to use that. The ads practically write themselves.
Jeff forgot to close the sarcasm tag after “Shocked.”
That’s OK, most of us picked it up anyway.
I will get to find out in October or November what the new damages will be and what the new plan will be.
I’m not looking forward to it.
Presidents message:
“It’s all Booooosh’s and the Republicans fault.”
“And don’t forget the eviiiillll rich….it’s all their fault too.
– Rinse and repeat as often as possible between now and November.
When was the last time a sitting President followed the House Minority Leader around trying to rebut a speech from same, weeks later? He is a small small man. A midget of a President.
– This little Socialist shithead sitting in the oval office pretending to be President is going to ride that class warfare card all the way into the ground, and he’s taking us all down with him.
– There’s a growing number of his own party starting to revolt openly, and not just because they face increasingly difficult elections of their own. They, unlike Bumbblefuck, see he’s a one trick pony, and the trick didn’t work, and will never work, and it is going to look like rats leaving a drowning king rat before its over.
– Hillery fired a few opening rounds across Bambi’s bow this morning. If he finds himself in open revolt watch out. No telling what his sort of idiolog might try to do when he’s completely cornered. Cornered rats do not work and play well with others.
When was the last time a sitting President followed the House Minority Leader around trying to rebut a speech from same,
Monday.
When cornered, he’ll double down on his ideology. He is right and everyone else is wrong, and that will never change. It cannot change, because he is incapable of changing.
Barry’s gonna ride the bomb all the way into the ground.
#25: It is going to provide an awesome example of what the phrase “crash and burn” actually means.
– I have a vision of this numbskull ramping up the class warfare stupidity, and finally being dragged bodily from the oval office, while he screams “Viva la Che!”
– In the mean time one of his hero’s, the good Generalissimo Castro, now says “The Communist economy is not working in Cuba”. He also said the entire Cuban missile crisis was pointless, and not worth the bother.
– That only took, what, 49 years. Anyone who thinks you’re going to change the minds of the Progessive morons is delusional.
That is half of Cloward-Piven (collapse the existing institutions…) Conveniently, they have the other half (…into a new framework) ready to go: “Public Option”. If you’ve ever seen animation of a star going supernova, this should look very familiar.
Wonder when El Jefe is going to invite in the international forensics experts & show them where the mass graves are.
“….show them where the mass graves are.”
– Fidel would have had those dug up years ago, and all the bodies cremated and the ashes spread in the workers paradise fields TSI. Remember, in any Communism all outcomes have to be carefully managed.
Turns out that Cloward-Piven is really a step-by-step handbook for the Democrat Party’s suicide.
On a related note: Will the self-immolation of the Democrat Party mean that the Republicans will have to sit on the left now?
– If this idiocy continues unabated, and there’s no sign that it will not, when unemployment goes passed about 15% the Democratic party will essentially cease to exist, and of course no one will admit to being a Progressive or Leftist of any stripe, so we’ll be left with Independents and Republicans. The crazies will still be out there, but they’ll be as invisible as possible.
– Hanoi Jane may burn a flag in protest or something, but she was never very smart to begin with, so there’s that.
barack ackbar
Conveniently, they have the other half (…into a new framework) ready to go: “Public Option”.
I can only hope that this phase of their plan fails as badly as the others. I’m looking for a physician who will make a house call in exchange for whiskey. If it was good enough for my great-great-grandfather in the wastes of South Dakota, it’s good enough for me.
Squid – We have already looked into a concierge type of service, all cash, no insurance. But we will be fined for doing so under the current mandate.
#6 – yeah, how DARE you! Make a voluntary payment in exchange for services you receive from a licensed and qualified medical provider?! You think you are free to do that anymore? Wrecker! Kulak! Horder! Splittist!
Er,… #36 that is.
Remember when ODumbass said our insurance premiums would be reduced by 3000%?
http://townhall.com/blog/g/3cec9326-b847-4ee0-b704-67e11748e88c
And Pelosi said we’d get 400,000 jobs immediately after Obamacare was passed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJKGWEkkE7E
Ha, ha! Good times…
The administration has predicted all sorts of things which didn’t come out favorably for them. It’s almost as if their calculations are based on the best possible outcome, one that has been blessed by fairies and unicorns.
Fuck You! We had this shit figured out too!
Dammit, we’re trying!
Oh, and notice the non-use of expletives in our name. Image and all.
Oh, for fucks sake. Here we go again.
If only the press had known that deep and abiding love of themselves, Barry, and the Democrats would destroy them all.
Hell, Barry and his Hope-and-Trainwreck have even convinced Fidel that Socialism’s a failure.
He really is magic!
He really is magic!
– Yeh. All the magic of a South side Chicago bagman, handing out the winning numbers for the day.
Previously the administration had calculated that the batch of changes taking effect this fall would raise premiums no more than 1% to 2%, on average.
My wife is a teacher (charter school, put down those pitchforks) so our insurance year starts in the fall. Our premium went up 100%, our deductible 100%, our office copay 150%. Our prescription copay is up 100-300% depending on which part of the formulary the drug falls in (old scrip plan had no formulary).
They were correct with the 1-2 thing, they just forgot a few zeros. Zero is nothing.
Everything’s just great. /sarc
[…] “Health Insurers Plan Hikes” […]
I just hope that Waxman is dumb enough to propose a second round of hearings to lecture the bad companies on how they’re making stuff up to embarrass The One.
The mere fact that concierge services are getting more public exposure should leave us some hope in developing this industry.
Concierge services have usually a long history ; yet it still remains a mystical issue to the average end user.