In his ObamaCare valedictory last week, President Obama championed the law’s successes: twenty million Americans have free or subsidized insurance; sick people cannot be denied coverage; thrifty policies with spending limits are gone. His timing was impeccable, as three days later the government announced that premiums increased nationwide by an average of 25% as insurers flee the exchanges. Yet, President Obama remains in denial about the root cause of this calamity. He insists that the “problems that may have arisen from the Affordable Care Act [are] not because government is too involved in the process.” Instead, he continues to blame rising premiums, shrinking networks, and reduced choice on everything else, except the Affordable Care Act itself.
In a brief moment of candor, former President Clinton called the ACA’s collapse “the craziest thing in the world,” and lamented that people who liked their insurance have found their “premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.” President Obama maintains a different explanation. “Insurers just set their prices too low at the outset,” he said, and when “they started losing money . . . now they’ve decided to significantly increase premiums.” This explanation sounds intuitive, but is extremely misleading.