hvactec
VIP Member
Employer health insurance premiums went up on average about 9 percent in 2011, and you can expect a lot more where that came from. Only a fool didnt see this coming, which is to say the White House, every member of Congress who voted for the health care legislation, and all of their liberal enablers who have dreamed so long for the day when the government would take control of the health care system.
I was in the middle of the fight against ObamaCare. Trying to explain to Democrats and their staffs why the legislation would make health insurance premiums explode was like banging your head against the Berlin Wall.
They would mindlesslyalmost zombie-likeregurgitate the liberal talking points, asserting that if we could just get everyone in the health insurance pool, premiums would go down, not up. Didnt President Obama repeatedly promise that premiums would fall $2,500 for a family by the end of his first term?
So the government:
Provides coverage to an additional 45 million to 50 million uninsured Americansnote that the uninsured spend less than half of what the insured spend on health care, so their spending will rise significantly;
Requires insurance to cover lots of additional treatments and services, in many cases free of charge to the patient; and
Guarantees that people will spend very little out of pocket, which insulates them from the cost of their decisions;
And the president argueswell, he used to argue, until the facts could no longer be deniedthat total health care spending would go down!
Every aspect of the current health insurance system that makes health care so expensiverequirements to cover lots of additional therapies, limiting patients cost exposure, and subsidizing the most expensive health plans (through employers or the government) so that more people will choose themis in ObamaCare on steroids.
Under normal conditions, health insurers and their actuaries would have spoken out vociferously, trying to inject some insurance principles into the debate. But there were at least two countervailing factors this time around.
First, the Obama administration and the Democrats who controlled Congress at the time made it clear that they would make lifeand the ability to do businesshell for any insurer that fought them. I can recall talking to an insurance company executive in August of 2009, the summer of the huge rallies against ObamaCare, who told me he had a stack of red folders on his deskdemands from Democratic committee chairmen for various types of information. The message was clear: get on board with ObamaCare or expect to spend a lot of time answering committee demands, or testifying before Congress, or worse. So far I havent found anyone willing to speak out on the record about these strong-arm tacticsand probably wont until 2013.
Second, the primary health insurance trade association, Americas Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)which is run by, Karen Ignani, who worked as a Democratic Hill staffer and for the AFL-CIOnever took an aggressive stand against ObamaCare.
read more The Failure of Health Care Reform: An Insider's View - Forbes
I was in the middle of the fight against ObamaCare. Trying to explain to Democrats and their staffs why the legislation would make health insurance premiums explode was like banging your head against the Berlin Wall.
They would mindlesslyalmost zombie-likeregurgitate the liberal talking points, asserting that if we could just get everyone in the health insurance pool, premiums would go down, not up. Didnt President Obama repeatedly promise that premiums would fall $2,500 for a family by the end of his first term?
So the government:
Provides coverage to an additional 45 million to 50 million uninsured Americansnote that the uninsured spend less than half of what the insured spend on health care, so their spending will rise significantly;
Requires insurance to cover lots of additional treatments and services, in many cases free of charge to the patient; and
Guarantees that people will spend very little out of pocket, which insulates them from the cost of their decisions;
And the president argueswell, he used to argue, until the facts could no longer be deniedthat total health care spending would go down!
Every aspect of the current health insurance system that makes health care so expensiverequirements to cover lots of additional therapies, limiting patients cost exposure, and subsidizing the most expensive health plans (through employers or the government) so that more people will choose themis in ObamaCare on steroids.
Under normal conditions, health insurers and their actuaries would have spoken out vociferously, trying to inject some insurance principles into the debate. But there were at least two countervailing factors this time around.
First, the Obama administration and the Democrats who controlled Congress at the time made it clear that they would make lifeand the ability to do businesshell for any insurer that fought them. I can recall talking to an insurance company executive in August of 2009, the summer of the huge rallies against ObamaCare, who told me he had a stack of red folders on his deskdemands from Democratic committee chairmen for various types of information. The message was clear: get on board with ObamaCare or expect to spend a lot of time answering committee demands, or testifying before Congress, or worse. So far I havent found anyone willing to speak out on the record about these strong-arm tacticsand probably wont until 2013.
Second, the primary health insurance trade association, Americas Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)which is run by, Karen Ignani, who worked as a Democratic Hill staffer and for the AFL-CIOnever took an aggressive stand against ObamaCare.
read more The Failure of Health Care Reform: An Insider's View - Forbes
