Seventeen of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance companies now say premiums will rise from 100 to 400 percent under Obamacare.
Finding out what’s in it: Seventeen of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance companies now say premiums will rise from 100 to 400 percent under Obamacare.
The key reasons for the surge in premiums include providing wider services than people are now paying for and adding less healthy people to the roles of insured, said the report.
Now ain’t that a surprise? The rates go up when you require insurance companies to provide more services while simultaneously requiring them to insure more sick people! Who wudda thunk it?
Actually, every Republican and conservative in the nation, as well as millions of Americans at townhall meetings in 2010, were screaming these basic facts of reality to the Democrats. They just refused to listen.
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Finding out what’s in it: Seventeen of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance companies now say premiums will rise from 100 to 400 percent under Obamacare.
The key reasons for the surge in premiums include providing wider services than people are now paying for and adding less healthy people to the roles of insured, said the report.
Now ain’t that a surprise? The rates go up when you require insurance companies to provide more services while simultaneously requiring them to insure more sick people! Who wudda thunk it?
Actually, every Republican and conservative in the nation, as well as millions of Americans at townhall meetings in 2010, were screaming these basic facts of reality to the Democrats. They just refused to listen.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Thus far, the average Dem voter has been oblivious to the cost of Obamacare. When these price increases hit them in THEIR wallets, you’ll see Dem Congressmen running scared and offering to pass “fixes” to this train-wreck.
No, “the average Dem voter” expects that health insurance costs will be capped at under 10% of family income by Obamacare. As for how realistic, this may be…. time will tell. Last I looked, the USA was spending about 17% of its GNP on health care costs of all kinds; suggesting that this is going to be doubled or tripled or quadrupled by the new law is a tad silly. Tell, you what though, if medical costs do go up to that extent, don’t you think it’d be a good argument for a federal takeover of healthcare? After all, places like France and Germany and Sweden and many others provide healthcare to all their citizens for about half of CURRENT American costs — about 10 % of GNP rather than the 35 -70% that’s being suggested here.
I must admit to a bit puzzlement however. I followed the link, to a website which provided those 100-300% increase figures Fred quoted, But when I went off to its link, I came to a House Energy and Commerce Committee website, which didn’t actually cite any insurance companies as saying rates would increase that much. The actual document for perusal was a latter FROM the committee chairman TO a number of insurance companies telling them that because of Obamacare costs the insurance companies would be forced to bear exorbitant costs and asking them what their rates would become. It isn’t really the case that 17 insurance companies spontaneously decided that after independent analysis of how Obamacare might work that they would have to increase their rates and came up with same sort of number. So, this is sort of interesting.
Meanwhile, why we wait to see how this all comes out, think some more about the merits of socialized medicine. (It hurts bit less if you learn to think of it as “single payer.”)
Thinking that Obamacare will morph — as it was designed to do — into single payer doesn’t not make the concept hurt less. If you think that a massive government bureaucracy, empowered by nearly 3,000 pages of legislation and perhaps 30,000 pages of regulations, will result in lower cost, you might want to think again — particularly because payment for this program will be administered by the IRS.
What’s truly interesting is that the only area of U.S. healthcare in which costs have dropped over the last decade is in cosmetic and elective surgery — because it’s the only area not covered by health insurance.
There is no doubt Obamacare is a train wreck fast approaching the American public. And the one person capable of saving the country — House Speaker John Boehner, who can bring Obamacare to a screeching halt by refusing to fund it — seems uninterested in taking such a courageous stand. So, we wait for the best healthcare system in the world to be demolished by a misguided, incompetent administration hellbent on controlling the most private aspects of our lives.
What we must do to truly reform healthcare is to deregulate it at the federal level, permit interstate sales (which is actually constitutional, because it promotes interstate commerce), and allow the 50 states to figure out their own systems. Eventually, I think, that will promote a return to the best system, in which doctors and patients dealt directly with one another financially. Supplementing that would be state-authorized HSAs and private insurance with high deductibles, properly purchased as a hedge against “major medical” expenses. And on top of it all, the emergence of cyber medicine, in which much diagnosis and recommended treatment becomes available online.
Oh, and this alternative would make unnecessary both a national patient database, which gives the federal government access to private medical records, and those appropriately named death panels, in which unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats decide who receives healthcare and who doesn’t. That decision would return — as has been drummed into us for decades by feminists — exclusively to the patient and the doctor.
Remember that the IRS is going to enforce Obamacare. Can you see it….just like what the IRS did to the Tea Party 501C applications…I’m sorry Mr. patient, in order for your wife to receive her breat cancer treatment you’ll need to fill out this 21 page computer form and wait for us to get back to you. Oh, we see that you are a conservative and voted for the Republican Party in the last several elections….We’ll get back to you. Just wait for us to get back to you and your wife.
To Mike Shupp: I’m puzzled at your puzzlement. First of all, I’m not sure who Fred is. So, I can’t say anything about the numbers he posted. Second of all, I don’t recall seeing anyone say it was the “the case that 17 insurance companies spontaneously decided that after independent analysis of how Obamacare might work that they would have to increase their rates and came up with same sort of number.” Of course, they did the analysis after the letter from the committee.
Finally, I’m guessing you didn’t actually read the report. Over and over the report referenced “the documents sent from the insurance providers”. So, all the numbers quoted are real responses from the providers. In fact, the report includes links to every document that was sent in response.
Ever wonder who wrote the Obama care bill?
It was the insurance companies. Notice how nowhere in the bill did it regulate prices. Basically just ordered everyone to start paying for Insurance.
They just didn’t realize who much power they were handing to the government and are just now realizing that.
They had no plans to cover everyone for everything. But the politicians got their hands on it and added that little clause into the bill.
Now the big Democrat donors need to raise prices to cover costs.
Guess whats next? That is right. Price controls. Limited availability and limited services. Death panels deciding on who gets what treatment using an ever changing metric that only they know.
As soon as the Democrats start to control pricing the insurance companies are going to move overseas. Then change their business into something they can reinvest and work with in the US. Like gun companies or real estate. They will not want to be outside the largest economy on the planet.
A federal takeover isn’t a good thing, ever….exhibit A: the deficit runnig US Postal Service.
The IRS will be used to intimidate and collect from those not complying to the Obamacare mandate. That sure doesn’t sound nice a smiley-faced liberal?
The word “socialized” doesn’t sound so good when in instituting it requires the full force of the IRS to ultimately enforce it.
Oh, by the way, it was Winston Churchill who said that socialism ultimately requires a police force. Ergo: Socialism ultimately requries a police state.
Now, how’s that for compassionate, empathetic healthcare all in the name of spreading the wealth around. The problem is that you can’t spread
other people’s physical health around like you can after illegally taking their money. Taking others’ money to pay for healthcare access for others won’t change the fundamental problem facing healthcare today :individual behavioral decisons.
Welcome to your socialist eutopia…aint’ it grand!!!!!?????
This stopped being insurance along time ago. Insurance requires a risk calculation being spread across a particular population to determine a cost, the model that has been embraced is no longer insurance.
These points were made by many, many people prior to March 2010. I would submit that the more productive course is too figure out how you can cut the middleman (government) out of your health care access and delivery. The difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals operate in a world where things are done to them, where the world is full of inimical forces that impede them. Let’s take control of our lives. If we bitch about what’s already been decided, we’re playing their game.
“Tell, you what though, if medical costs do go up to that extent, don’t you think it’d be a good argument for a federal takeover of healthcare?”
So because politicians messed up our healthcare system causing costs to rise, it is a good argument for politicians to take over the healthcare system?
Washington State insurers just announced their products and rates for the Exchange that will be available next year when ObamaCare takes effect.
Huge rate increases predicted by critics and some health insurance companies did not materialize. The rates and product mix reveal that individuals will be able to buy insurance that covers more and costs less. Advocates of the new program, who believed that more local competition in the marketplace would help consumers in these two areas, appear to be correct.
Insurance company profits will be negatively affected. How do we stop this abomination?
When you listen to insurers complain about a new government program, it usually isn’t based on their concern for the public. Like any corporate entity, they are looking to defend their profits.
If politicians spent more time trying to tweak this plan positively instead of trying to outright repeal it, more good may come of the final process.
Health insurance is currently set up in this country on a state-by-state basis. Suggestions that insurers compete nationally would create an uproar from the insurance companies because it would impact their profits. The beneficiaries of that change would be the rest of us.
Washington might have stayed the same.
The same with NY and California. But all the fly over states who normally had FAR FAR lower rates saw HUGE rate increases.
Heck Ohio is seeing an 82% increase alone. And that doesn’t include the increased coverage and lowered deductibles mandated by Obama care.
If premiums go down and coverages increase in the most populated states, it sounds like some tweaking in the “fly over” states might make this less of a disaster than has been suggested by some. That would require some action by our mindless politicians other than “repeal the damn thing”. I say “fix the damn thing”. The concept of better coverage levels and lower deductibles is not necessarily a bad thing.
If competition was not limited within state boundaries, maybe some of the benefits enjoyed by the more populated states could be shared by some of the less populated ones? The larger states have the benefit of more carriers to compete for this business. The insurance carriers wouldn’t care for that, because for some of them, the monopoly status they enjoy would be diluted.
Isn’t that capitalism? Isn’t that why it works (most of the time)?
For increased coverage you have to have increased costs.
Its a fact of life, economics. If you want more gas you have to pay more.
The simple fact is that people lived longer and cost the insurance companies less in all those fly over states.
Urban people cost the insurance companies more money, used more services and were thus charged more.
By forcing insurance companies to basically work only inside their own states they couldn’t pass on the increased costs of big city folk off on the rural folk.
But now that the Democrats/socialists/communists, give me something for free crowd is in charge they want to spread the cost of their unhealthy lifestyle and monthly visits to the doctor off on the flyover states.
I’m sure you have never bought car insurance but…
In my area because of theft my insurance is 10% less in my county than in the next county over specifically because of their increased car theft rate vs the very low theft rate in my area.
If we treat car insurance like you want health insurance treated, I would have to pay more because of were some other person lives. Just so that person could pay less.
“Isn’t that capitalism? Isn’t that why it works (most of the time)?”
Not any more.
You are right. I refuse to buy car insurance.
I will not accede to government forcing me to buy something I don’t want or need, regardless of the impact it has on others.
I have to note the important constitutional distinction between car insurance and Obamacare. Car insurance is properly mandated by state laws, not the federal government. Obamacare is mandated by the federal government, an unprecedented act that goes against all the basic principles of our federalist system.
If the states wanted to mandate that you have to buy health insurance (as Massachusetts has), then they have that right. It might even work, though I personally doubt it (Massachusetts effort has not been much of a success). Having the federal government do it, however, is a disaster not only legally but morally. It tilts the power structure too much in the direction of a centralized command system led from Washington, something we really do not want.
As for car insurance, we could also spend some time arguing about the success of the states’ effort to force everyone to buy it. I’m not sure that works very well either.