First, some good news for a change:
According to the CBO, the net cost of the Affordable Care Act is projected to cost $5 billion less in 2014 than originally projected. The projected cost from 2015 to 2024 is estimated to cost $104 billion less than originally expected.
“CBO’s new forecasts reflect the fact that premiums on the exchange have come in slightly lower than initially expected,” Vox’s Sarah Kliff wrote Monday after the report was published online. “The ones being sold this year tend to pay doctors less and have ‘narrower networks of providers.’ When health plans contract with fewer doctors, they typically can negotiate cheaper prices with the few physicians they do include in their networks.”
Well, kind of good news. The government will be spending less money, but passing the crappy health networks on to you. There’s also the wee little issue that even if a spending increase is smaller than forecast, it’s still a spending increase.
You also have to wonder something about those lower-than-expected premiums. Right now, insurers on the private exchanges might be engaging in a little moral hazard when pricing their plans. Thanks to ♡bamaCare!!!’s “risk corridors,” they know there is bailout money available to them if they price their plans too low. And let’s face it: There’s an unspoken assumption that it would be politically impossible for this Administration to allow any health insurer to go bankrupt as the law rolls out.
Enjoy those lower premiums, kids — you (or your grandkids) will still pay the difference.
Speaking of lower premiums… wait, what lower premiums? Read:
“For the last, about, five years they’ve been doing this survey, so this was the largest percentage increase in any quarter since they’ve been doing (it),” said Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute.
“But at 12 percent, 11 percent increase on average across all the states — that puts it at the upper end of any increase we’ve seen for decades.”
That is the national average in a survey done by Morgan Stanley. But in some states, it found rates are soaring.
“There are specific states with exorbitant increases,” Gottlieb said. “Delaware had 100 percent increase, Florida had a 37 percent increase, Pennsylvania 28 percent increase, California had a 53 percent increase in their premiums.”
The story doesn’t make it clear, so I’m assuming that this survey focused on all insurers, or maybe just on employer-based coverage plans, and not just on the exchanges. So it looks to me like ♡bamaCare!!!’s vast army of losers includes those who don’t have to purchase on the exchanges.
You think those CBO numbers will still look so nice when, as planned, employers start dumping more people onto ♡bamaCare!!!?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member