“[T]he Democrats wanted to provide benefits they could tout during the election. So they tucked all these fine sounding goodies into the law to take effect early. Unfortunately, until the individual mandate kicks in (and maybe/probably even after it does), some of these provisions give people every incentive to game the system by waiting until, say, their kid gets leukemia to buy a policy… If you really think that insurance price increases have nothing to do with costs, and everything to do with insurer greed, you need to explain a few anomalies. First of all, why did insurers all suddenly get much greedier now? And if they haven’t gotten greedier, then why did they wait until the middle of a recession to impose price increases just at the time when they are most likely to cost the insurers their healthiest customers?”
“This paper presents updated national health spending projections for 2009–2019 that take into account recent comprehensive health reform legislation and other relevant changes in law and regulations. Relative to our February 2010 projections under prior law, average annual growth in national health spending over the projection period is estimated to be 0.2 percentage point higher than our previous estimate. The health care share of gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to be 0.3 percentage point higher in 2019. Within these net overall impacts are larger differences for trends in spending and spending growth by payer, attributable to reform’s many major changes to health care coverage and financing.”
The government’s Medicare actuaries determined that national health spending would increase under ObamaCare, with families paying an average of $265 more annually. This is assuming Congress allows hundred of billions in Medicare spending cuts to be enacted, which they have consistently voted to repeal. “Factoring in the law, Americans will spend an average of $13,652 per person a year on health care in 2019, according to the actuary’s office. Without the law, the corresponding number would be $13,387. That works out to $265 more with the overhaul. The big picture numbers are $4.6 trillion with the overhaul in 2019, and $4.5 trillion without it. The nation will spend $2.6 trillion on health care this year.”
“Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported today in Health Affairs that overall health spending will constitute 20 percent of the economy by 2019, up from 17 percent now. An Associated Press article about the report says that ‘factoring in the law, Americans will spend an average of $13,652 per person a year on health care in 2019. . . . Without the law, the corresponding number would be $13,387. That works out to $265 more with the overhaul.’That hardly ‘bends the cost curve down,’ as Mr. Obama and his allies in Congress repeatedly promised the law would do. And it does not take the burden of rising health-care costs off the backs of struggling consumers or businesses — again, as they promised.”
ObamaCare’s new mandates and regulations are causing insurers to significantly raise premiums or drop out of the market and cancel existing policies. This directly contradicts promises by supporters that if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. “In the letter sent to the Alcantaras and other customers, Grand Prairie-based National Health Insurance Co. said it could no longer offer individual accident and health insurance policies. It blamed its decision on the company’s inability to meet requirements of the health care overhaul signed into law this year.”
ObamaCare was supposed to have “bent the cost curve” and lowered health spending in family budgets and the federal budget. But it does nothing to lower costs, and Instead the huge new government program will accelerate spending growth.
“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. Aetna Inc., some BlueCross BlueShield plans and other smaller carriers have asked for premium increases of between 1% and 9% to pay for extra benefits required under the law, according to filings with state regulators. These and other insurers say Congress’s landmark refashioning of U.S. health coverage, which passed in March after a brutal fight, is causing them to pass on more costs to consumers than Democrats predicted.”