October 15, 2015

ObamaCare’s Premium Results

Premiums up, co-ops collapsing and no improvement in sight.

As we all know, with the creation of ObamaCare we were told if you liked your insurance policy and doctor you could keep them. Those broken promises were just the tip of the iceberg. As we detailed a few months back, next year consumers could see premium increases of as much as 51%. But the bad news isn’t limited to premium increases.

In several states, most recently Kentucky, the insurance co-ops set up to enhance the market — at the cost of billions of federal dollars in seed money — are going belly-up. “Things have [financially] come up short of where they need to be,” wrote Kentucky Health Cooperative CEO Glenn Jennings in a statement to participants. The co-op’s demise was blamed on lower-than-expected risk corridor payments. Other states where co-ops have failed include Louisiana, Nevada, Iowa and New York, which was the nation’s largest.

And those likely won’t be the last. Eleven other co-ops are on an “enhanced oversight” financial probation, meaning out of 23 co-ops chartered just two years ago, a sizeable majority are facing financial difficulties. Taxpayers will be left holding the bag.

The concept of risk corridors was envisioned as one of three legs of the stool supporting ObamaCare from the insurers’ standpoint. Risk corridors, in essence, were intended to “stabilize” (read: compensate for overregulating) the market. Insurers that made a profit of more than 3% would remit an increasing share of those excess profits into a fund designed to compensate those that lost money — the more money lost, the higher the subsidy. This works in tandem with a risk adjustment program that directly shifted funds from insurers that had more healthy risk pools to ones that had sicker customers. Finally, a reinsurance program provides direct subsidies to insurers who have people with high medical expenses.

So, in essence, a back-door single-payer system without calling it such.

Only the risk adjustment program was intended to be permanent, with the others expiring after 2016. More importantly, as part of the CRomnibus spending bill last year, Congress added a provision to the risk corridor program making it revenue-neutral. Losing that blank check made it impossible for some of the weaker co-ops to continue because the profitable insurers are far outnumbered by the money losers.

The demise of these co-ops, combined with an ever-shrinking number of insurers willing to risk their bottom line, leaves thousands in an insurance limbo as their carriers fail or leave the market. Some Americans, like columnist Michelle Malkin, are facing this situation for the second time since ObamaCare took full effect, as their insurance plans got canceled. Then again, if you’re running a company losing 12 cents on the dollar as calculated by researcher Brian Blase at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, that’s usually an indication the market is a failure.

Neither forcing people to search for new insurance during the busy open enrollment season nor forcing them to cut family budgets for the next double-digit premium increase rank high on the political popularity list. You may recall open enrollment for 2015 was pushed back to begin after the 2014 election; a move the Obama administration claimed would give consumers more time to evaluate plans while cynics made the case that it was to push the sticker shock safely past the midterms. With the provisions for insurers ending after 2016, Barack Obama’s successor will have to deal with the fallout. To minimize the damage to Democrats in the 2016 elections, they will probably dupe Republican “leaders” into a one-year extension on the risk corridors and reinsurance.

It’s now legacy time for Obama. We contend he will be remembered as the man who destroyed American health care by wiping out a system that worked reasonably well and satisfied the overwhelming majority of Americans for decades, all to make the bulk of new enrollees dependent on the government through Medicaid. That’s one to tell the grandkids.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.