Scott Gottlieb:
Health insurance premiums are showing the sharpest increases perhaps ever according to a survey of brokers who sell coverage in the individual and small group market. Morgan Stanley’s healthcare analysts conducted the proprietary survey of 148 brokers. The April survey shows the largest acceleration in small and individual group rates in any of the 12 prior quarterly periods when it has been conducted.
The average increases are in excess of 11% in the small group market and 12% in the individual market. Some state show increases 10 to 50 times that amount. The analysts conclude that the “increases are largely due to changes under the ACA.”
The analysts conducting the survey attribute the rate increases largely to a combination of four factors set in motion by Obamacare: Commercial underwriting restrictions, the age bands that don’t allow insurers to vary premiums between young and old beneficiaries based on the actual costs of providing the coverage, the new excise taxes being levied on insurance plans, and new benefit designs.
The prior survey conducted in January also showed rates rising during the fall of 2013, but the new increases will come on top of those hikes and are even sharper. That prior survey of 131 brokers found that December 2013 rates were rising in excess of 6% in the small group market, and 9% in the individual market.
Those graphs at this link were amazing!
Why did we have to make ObamaCare a law, again?
Thus it is established that there are now 148 new documented racists in the U S.
It is Progressive to spread the wealth around. Once insurance is completely unaffordable, the only option left will be single payer. Then secret committees of faceless bureaucrats can decide who lives and who dies.
And you had better believe that how you vote will strongly influence the decision.
Come on. It is all about the Universal State. Combine the high premiums with a populist campaign, and “what was yours is mine” will become the operating principle in the U S.
Just abolish tax withholding and see how many people pay up!
Of course the old fable comes to mind: the guy who weaned his horse from eating, reducing the horse to one strand of hay a day, claiming success–except that the horse died.
The horse–in this case, the economy–is being systematically starved to death by wave after wave of regulation.
Then what? When we are all dependent on Government and nobody works?
I call that DYSTOPIA.
Alas for my country. Nobody reads Federalist anymore, nor do they read de Toqueville.
And the coming disaster is spelled out in those ancient documents for all to see.
@Nanny G: “We” didn’t; THEY did.
@mathman2: “Then secret committees of faceless bureaucrats can decide who lives and who dies.” And the IRS has already shown them the selection process.