The dumpster fire known as ObamaCare just keeps burning hotter. The Department of Health and Human Services released a report this week on the laughably named “Affordable” Care Act and, in what should come as a surprise to no one, it showed that the average cost of individual health care plans has doubled since 2013. That year, the average monthly premium was $224, but by 2017 it was $476.

In fact, we in our own humble shop can verify the HHS numbers. In 2008 — the good old pre-Obama years — our company health insurance premiums cost $382 per month per family (we’re a very small group). By 2013, as ObamaCare’s effects were beginning to be felt, our monthly premiums had risen to $554 per month. In the ensuing years, we’ve reduced coverage to keep costs under control, and yet to renew our plan in 2017 will cost a gut-wrenching $1,291 per month. We’re shopping other options.

Now let’s flashback to 2008 when Barack Obama was stumping for his health care plan. He promised, “We’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.” And he didn’t just say this once but repeatedly. Then in 2012, after the passage of the onerous law, Obama made another promise: “You should know that once we [have ObamaCare] fully implemented, you’re going to be able to buy insurance through a pool so that you can get the same good rates as a group that if you’re an employee at a big company you can get right now — which means your premiums will go down.” Obama was lying, and his disastrous law is hurting more people than it has helped, by far.

Along with the rest of the nation, we obviously missed out on Obama’s health care utopia, because our premiums have tripled for less coverage (no, we couldn’t “keep our plan”) since he promised all these fantastical savings.

Meanwhile, from the world of leftist propaganda, the only story on health care being covered today is the newly released report from the Congressional Budget Office on its projection of the impact of the House Republicans’ American Health Care Act. The big news is that this plan could leave an estimated 23 million Americans without health insurance. But in a free society where individuals are not forced by government to purchase health insurance, there will be those who choose not to, so of course there will be an increase in the number of those who are uninsured. The far bigger issue in a nation that prizes individual liberty is the cost of insurance and health care. But when the premise is “universal coverage,” we get stories about the millions without it.

Obama and the Democrats created this health care nightmare and foisted it upon the American people, and yet the Leftmedia-leading Washington Post has the gall to completely ignore the HHS report on what actually happened to premiums because they’re too busy blasting Republicans over a CBO projection on an ObamaCare repeal and replacement bill the Senate has yet to consider. Just a reminder: Republicans are the ones seeking to save Americans from this total mess. Maybe it’s journalism that dies in darkness.