Saturday, October 16, 2010

Obamacare Is The Reason For A 47 Percent Health Insurance Rate Hike By Anthem

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."-- Nancy Pelosi

Curant:

The state's largest insurer has been approved to raise health premium rates by 41 percent to 47 percent for some of its policies sold to individual buyers, in the largest price hikes yet seen in Connecticut since the adoption of national health care reform.

For all of its individual market plans, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has received approval to raise rates by at least 19 percent -- including a range of 30 percent to 44 percent for the brand of plans in the individual market that was most popular in 2009, Century Preferred.

The reason for the increases is the new federal health reform mandates, according to Anthem and the state Department of Insurance, which is defending its approval against charges by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Those reforms took effect Sept. 23.


Emphasis mine.

Ouch.

The very first comment after the article, says it all.

So the "Affordable" Health Care Act is hurting affordability by up to 47%?


Flashback- March 2010, Barack Obama (video below)




Text, from the White House website itself:

......So Americans buying comparable coverage to what they have today -- I already said this -- would see premiums fall by 14 to 20 percent -- that’s not my numbers, that’s what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says -- for Americans who get their insurance through the workplace. How many people are getting insurance through their jobs right now? Raise your hands. All right. Well, a lot of those folks, your employer it’s estimated would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent [sic], which means they could give you a raise. (Applause.).....

Connecticut is just latest in a long line of "learning what is in the bill after it passed" .

Recent news shows that Colorado is raising rates in Colorado, ending sales of child-only policies and blaming their actions in part on the federal health reform law. (source)

Michigan- Some health insurers in Southeast Michigan are beginning to charge higher premiums to employers who offer high-deductible employee health plans and then 'wrap' the plans by buying gap insurance or giving workers subsidies to cover the deductibles.

NYT reported that major insurance companies have stopped offering new child-only policies because under Obamacare it would be unprofitable.

WSJ:

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.


The search engines are full of these articles and before people start screaming about those "nasty" insurance companies, businesses are not started with the goal of losing money and when laws are passed that that will cost a business their profits, those losses are always handed down to consumers.

It is called Capitalism.

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the market rather than by central planning by the government; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses and companies.


The icing on this Obamacare cake is that while insurance companies are raising premiums, Obamacare also requires by threat of fines that you, the consumer, pay those prices and mandate that everyone spend those extra dollars to buy insurance.

Thank heavens a Florida judge has agreed to move forward with the lawsuits by 20 states arguing that mandate is not constitutional and that Congress does not have the right to force people to buy any product by virtue of simply being alive.

Judge Vinson disagreed. “It is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake,” he wrote. “It is based solely on citizenship and on being alive.”


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