Spiraling Obamacare Schadenfreude

The Obamacare Death Spiral Is Still Coming

A death spiral occurs when not enough young and healthy people sign up for health insurance. Thanks to Obamacare’s design, a death spiral is inevitable. Here’s why.

Obamacare’s community rating results in insurance prices that are higher for younger people than they would be in a free market, and its guaranteed issue allows people to sign up for insurance even if they get sick, so young and healthy people have ample incentive to forgo insurance. This leaves the insurance “risk pool” older and sicker and, hence, more costly to insure. Premiums will have to rise to cover those costs, leading some of the younger and healthier people who did initially sign up to then drop out. The risk pool then becomes even older and sicker, premiums rise again, and the process repeats.

A study by the late Conrad Meier examining the effect of these laws on eight states shows that premium hikes of at least 20 percent (and usually higher) are the canary in the coal mine for a death spiral.
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Suggested rates for 2016 are starting to trickle in, and it appears that the edges of the death spiral are on the horizon. In Oregon, five insurers on the exchange are proposing average premium increases for next year ranging from 25.6 percent to 52 percent. One other, ATRIO Health Plans, is asking for one that is near 20 percent (18.4 percent). Four insurance companies on Montana’s exchange are requesting average premium increases ranging from 22.4 percent to 45.1 percent.
In Oregon, five insurers on the exchange are proposing average premium increases for next year ranging from 25.6 percent to 52 percent.

The biggest company on Tennessee’s exchange, BlueCross/ BlueShield, is proposing an average premium increase of 36.6 percent, while the co-op on the exchange,Community Health Alliance, is proposing a 32.6 percent increase. In New Mexico, Health Service Corp. is asking for a premium hike of 51.6 percent. The largest insurer on South Dakota’s exchange is Wellmark, and in Maryland it is CareFirst. They are asking for average rate increases of 42.9 percent and 30.4 percent, respectively.

It appears that after a full year of costly medical claims and now knowing that most of their losses on the exchanges won’t be covered, some insurers have little choice but to raise rates precipitously.

Hey, where is the $2,500/year savings I was promised? What, you lied?

Obamacare's Double-Digit Rate Hikes For 2016 Disclosed

After two years of relatively stable premiums across the country, rates will jump in 2016 by double-digit percentages for individual policy purchasers on public exchanges under the Affordable Care Act in practically every state, according to the first glimpse of proposed costs for next year released by the Obama administration.

Experts see big price hikes for Obamacare

“People are already having that sticker shock,” said Gabriel Sanchez, executive director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico, who ran focus groups recently among Latinos in New Mexico.

The bottom line for participants, he said, was “I thought this was the Affordable Care Act?

You get what you vote for. Adjusted for lies.

One reason for higher prices? Less money being spend on actual healthcare and more money being spent on bullshit New Report Finds Obamacare Overhead to Cost $273 Billion

Obamacare will be responsible for $273.6 billion in new administrative costs between now and 2022 according to a new report released by Health Affairs Blog. As the researchers note, this means Obamacare overhead accounts for an average of $1,375 per newly insured person per year.

The report notes that overhead of government programs accounts for $101.4 billion while private insurance overhead accounts for the remaining $172.2 billion.

According to co-author Steffie Woolhander, the exorbitant amounts of money spent on administrative overhead in Obamacare undermines the stated goal of the law to provide affordable coverage to uninsured Americans. In fact, 22 percent of federal spending on Obamacare is being consumed by bureaucracy.

Bureaucrats everywhere are cheering. I still think it was a Cloward-Piven strategy from the beginning. Destroy the American health care insurance system with "reform" and when that falls into shambles impose your real plan, "single payer" i.e. socialized medicine.