Quantum Windbag
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- May 9, 2010
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Remember when he said that Obamacare would be a train wreck? If is beginnning to look like the train was carrying nuclear waste in leaking containers and that it crashed into the water supply. The lucky people will see their premiums double, the rest of us are screwed.
Double Down: Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women - Forbes
HHS releases a trickle of data and a load of spin
Earlier this month, I and two colleagues from the Manhattan InstituteYevgeniy Feyman and Paul Howardpublished an interactive map that detailed Obamacares impact on individually-purchased health insurance premiums in 13 states plus D.C. As the accompanying article described, Obamacare increased premiums in those states by an average of 24 percent.
But those states were largely blue states that had set up their own, state-based insurance exchanges. The big data dump that weve been waiting for, since then, is from the majority of states that didnt set up their own state-based exchange. That data is the responsibility of the Obama administration, namely HHS. Finally, with less than a week to go before the exchanges are supposed to go on-line, HHS has released a slim, 15-page report and a press release that summarize some of the premium data.
Premiums nationwide will also be around 16 percent lower than originally expected, HHS cheerfully announces in its press release. But thats a ruse. HHS compared what the Congressional Budget Office projected rates might look likein 2016to its own findings. Neither of those numbers tells you the stat that really matters: how much rates will go up next year, under Obamacare, relative to this year, prior to the law taking effect.
Former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin agrees. There are literally no comparisons to current rates. That is, HHS has chosen to dodge the question of whose rates are going up, and how much. Instead they try to distract with a comparison to a hypothetical number that has nothing to do with the actual experience of real people.
Double Down: Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women - Forbes