Remember when Obama toured around the country telling everyone that Obamacare was going to increase competition and lower healthcare premiums? If not, here is an example to help jog your memory (comments taken from Obama remarks delivered at Prince George’s Community College on 9/26/13):
Now, this is real simple. It’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans, side-by-side, the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak — (laughter) — same way you shop for a TV on Amazon. You just go on and you start looking, and here are all the options.
It’s buying insurance on the private market, but because now you’re part of a big group plan — everybody in Maryland is all logging in and taking a look at the prices — you’ve got new choices. Now you’ve got new competition, because insurers want your business. And that means you will have cheaper prices. (Applause.)
As it turns out, pretty much nothing that Obama and his healthcare “experts” predicted about Obamacare actually came true. With 2017 rates now finalized across the country, in fact, Obamacare premiums are expected to increase an average of 25% nationally according to data from the Kaiser Foundation. Meanwhile, the 10 hardest hit states will see premiums increase an average of 62% while Arizona is officially the biggest loser with rates in Phoenix soaring 145%.
Of course, as we’ve pointed out before, these skyrocketing rates could inevitably toss the entire Obamacare system into a death spiral from which it may never recover. In order to function properly, Obamacare required a substantial number of young/healthy people to sign up on the exchanges…we call it the “Young & Healthy Tax.” Unfortunately, many young/healthy people decided that they would rather not pay their “Young & Healthy Tax” and decided instead to pay the penalties associated with just not having healthcare at all. These shortfalls in new participants, of course, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for health insurers who, in hindsight, miscalculated their risk pool. These losses have now resulted in the massive premium spikes we’re currently seeing which will likely just result in even lower sign ups until the entire system eventually just collapses.
As we pointed out before, the following two maps below beautifully illustrate the epic collapse of Obamacare coverage in just 1 year. Notice that, despite Obama’s promises of increased competition, in reality, the majority of the country will go from having 3+ options for healthcare in 2016 to just 1 option in 2017 (charts per the New York Times).
2016 healthcare insurance carriers by county:
2017 healthcare insurance carriers by county:
Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to insist that all is well with the Affordable Care Act because many people participating in the exchanges receive taxpayer-funded subsidies…which is fine unless you’re one of the 1mm+ people in the country who purchase private insurance without the benefit of subsidies (or the taxpayer who has to fund those subsidies for everyone else).
In a call with reporters on Monday, officials with the Obama administration stressed that the new numbers don’t reflect what most people will end up paying.
“We think [consumers] will ultimately be surprised by the affordability of the product,” said Kevin Griffis, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The first step is admitting you have a problem.
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