California Officials Deliberately Mislead Public on Obamacare Rate Shock

Michael F. Cannon Ever since Obamacare became law, I have been counseling states not to establish the law’s health insurance “exchanges,” in part because: to create an Exchange is to create a taxpayer-funded lobbying group dedicated to fighting repeal. An Exchange’s employees would owe their power and their paychecks to this law. Naturally, they would aid the fight to preserve the law. California was the first state both to reject my advice and to prove my point. Officials operating California’s exchange–which the marketing gurus dubbed “Covered California“–recently and deliberately misled the entire nation about the cost of health insurance under Obamacare. They claimed that health plans offered through Covered California in 2014 will cost the same or less than health insurance costs today. “The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,” they wrote, “ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.” See? No rate shock. California’s top Obamacare bureaucrat, Peter Lee, declared his agency had hit “a home run for consumers.” Awesome! Unfortunately, anyone who knows anything about health insurance or Obamacare knew instantly that this claim was bogus, for three reasons. Obamacare or no Obamacare, health insurance premiums rise from year to year, and almost always by more than 2 percent. So right off ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs