For once, we agree wholeheartedly with the Obama campaign. By all means, let your friends know what has happened to your health insurance premiums since President Obama signed Obamacare into law on March 23, 2010.
Some Twitter users have already done so:
@BarackObama Obamacare is making health insurance more affordable for who exactly? My premiums have gone up 40% in two years. #middleclass
— NL East Champs (@TreyCumby) October 31, 2012
https://twitter.com/adamosborne/status/263660737661128705
https://twitter.com/MaddyinMass/status/260904297154359296
@BarackObama Our health insurance for a healthy family of three has gone up 209% since you signed the Affordable Health Care Act.
— Chuck Blakeman (@ChuckBlakeman) June 28, 2012
My husband's emplr (a large hospital network) just told them health ins premiums are going up 72%-image how much healthcare will cost nxt yr
— Margee Claudon (@margee53089) October 24, 2012
@acitrep @LotofLabs @megynkelly My insurance premiums R up 40% since 2011… and will go up again I'd bet under #ObamaCare. Someone has 2pay
— #Censored Patriot نgardenofthegods (@gardenofthegods) June 28, 2012
https://twitter.com/KS_Referee/status/260933848395808768
Just got an email from my healthcare company. Premiums are going up 40%. Affordable Health Care my ass.
— Chip (@Chip3Bag) June 28, 2012
So the 2 times my health premiums have gone up, was that a typo? What happened to all those cost cutting measures? Obamacare
— Richard J Dadamo (@DickDadamo) June 28, 2012
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LA Times: Obama said he would cut family health insurance premiums by $2,500 by the end 1st term .. But they are up more than 22% #Ohio
— Andy Wendt (@AndyWendt) October 30, 2012
The legislation Team Obama is touting is called the Affordable Care Act. It was supposed to make health insurance more affordable, not less. At a Virginia rally in the summer of 2008, Obama said:
“In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year … We won’t do all this twenty years from now, or ten years from now. We’ll do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States.” [Emphasis added!]
In fact, health insurance premiums have been climbing at a faster rate under Obama than they did during the last four years of George W. Bush’s presidency, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (via Jake Tapper of ABC News):
During Obama’s term, between 2009 to 2012, premiums have climbed $2,370 for the average family with an employer-provided plan – a rate faster than the during the previous four years under President George W. Bush, according to Kaiser.
But it will get better once the law is fully implemented in a few years, right? Actually, no.
Here’s what what a series of studies conducted by Milliman Inc. for the Society of Actuaries found (as summarized by Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post):
- In Indiana, Obamacare would increase premiums in the individual market on average by 75-95 percent in 2014.
- In Ohio, rates will increase 55-85 percent above current rates, before tax credits.
- In Minnesota individual market premiums will increase 26-42 percent.
- In Wisconsin, individual marketpremiums will rise 30 percent, before tax credits. “A majority of the individuals in the non-group market would pay more in premiums in 2016 than they pay today — both before and after tax credits are applied,” according to the Post.
Kessler’s conclusion:
The law’s provisions, especially the requirement for essential benefits, will almost certainly increase premiums, though tax subsidies will help mitigate the impact for a little over half of the people in the exchanges. But a lot of other people — such as a young male who currently has a plan that does not include all of the required benefits — are likely going to have sticker shock when they see what happens to their premiums starting in 2014.
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