As 2016 premiums rise when will the affordable" part begin?
By Dr. Merrill Matthews
Texas Insider Report: Dallas Texas Thank you President Obama.
Your arrogant uninformed and now we know from MIT economist Jonathan Gruber deceitful effort to push the U.S. health care system closer to
your preferred single-payer model has
more than doubled my wifes health insurance premiums. My wife has a Texas-based individual policy.
The premiums for this past year while not cheap didnt seem unreasonable. We were generally very happy with her coverage. But that policy ends Dec. 31 and she must enroll in an Obamacare-qualified plan.
Our insurance agent having done several comparisons suggested that most of her clients with policies from that insurer would likely be best off remaining with that company. But she warned most would be paying more.
She wasnt kidding!
So my wife went on the insurers website to see what was available among the policies that Obama and the Democrats require her to have if we want to avoid Obamas IRS imposing a penalty on us.
If she chooses a similar plan with the same $2500 deductible her premiums will more than double.
Alternatively she can switch to a $5000 deductibletwice her current deductiblefor about $25 more a month. But thats only if her doctor will accept that coverage. He accepts patients from that insurer but insurers in
many cases insurers have moved to narrow networks" i.e. a much more limited group of in-network doctors and hospitals in order to keep the premiums from rising even higher.
This exercise provides one of the best indicators of what Obamacare is doing to premiums because we are working with the same person and insurer and similar coverage to what she had. The only difference is Obamacares requirements.
It was completely predictable. In fact
health actuary Mark Litow and I predicted it in the Wall Street Journal last year. But now its hitting the pocketbook.
Obama and the Democrats paid a political price in the 2010 elections and again this November for their efforts to create a government-run health care system. But I suspect they havent finished paying yet.
As premiums rise the Affordable Care Act will likely be as big an issue in 2016 as it was this year. As the voters and maybe even the media demand to know when the affordable" part begins.
Dr. Merrill Matthews is a Resident Scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) in Dallas Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews
