Talk to a liar and you'll find they've usually got a list of excuses, a multiple choice menu of options of "reasons" for the item at issue. So it is with insurers. The LA Times is helping insurers come up with their next reason for raising insurance premiums--President Trump (Noam N. Levey, "Health Insurers plan big Obamacare rate hikes--and they blame Trump," May 18th, 2017.)
But what won't you see? The discussion by the Obama Administration, Congressional Budget Office, Private Health Insurance Premiums and Federal Policy, https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/51130-Health_Insurance_Premiums.pdf.
Let's take that trip down memory lane with the CBO, long before President Trump's election. The report begins,
"Over the period from 2005 to 2014, premiums for employment-based insurance grew by 48 percent for single coverage and by 55 percent for family coverage. CBO and JCT expect them to grow at similar rates over the next decade." -CBO
OK, so premiums went up by 55 percent for families from 2005 to 2014, that's according to the CBO under Obama, and there was NO SLOWDOWN of those increases anticipated by Obama's Administration over the next 10 years, now doing our math, that brings us to 2024, right?
CBO then explains that the federal government helps pay for premiums in two main ways, first with a tax credit for employers who provide their workers with health insurance options which the CBO laments COST the federal government (in lost taxes) $250 billion and then Obamacare payments which COST the federal government $40 billion PER YEAR, not for multiple years, but EACH year.
What they don't know, but talk about anyway. The CBO under a section titled "Premium Levels," admits:
"Because payments of premiums are private transactions, obtaining precise and timely data about them can be difficult." CBO Nevertheless, the CBO then goes into which consumers of health insurance financial product spent what.
As you go on through the article, the CBO confirms, and not for the first time, why non-group, the exchange plans have gone up less than employment based plans:
"Average premiums have been lower for nongroup plans than for employment-based plans primarily because nongroup plans have offered more limited coverage." -CBO
The old insurance trick of get less to save a buck, with most exchange plans at the bronze level, 60 percent coverage and most employment-based plans at 83 percent coverage--not even an option under Obamacare at the silver level.
Then the CBO gets into its projected increases in premiums and for those who read the LA Times, here's a gigantic grain of salt to read the article with, because the CBO, as has been confirmed here many times before, specifically notes that the Obamacare plans, the non-group plans on exchanges are going up because of the expiration of the payoff deal where the federal government pays insurers to prevent losses, in other words a no-lose cash payment called reinsurance.
"[N]ongroup premiums are projected to grow somewhat more quickly over the next few years because of factors related to the ACA (including a phaseout of the reinsurance program discussed below)." -CBO
The CBO itself indicates that Obamacare's government-insurance company partnership simply put the force of the federal government behind the very practices that contributed to our health industrial complex's fleecing of consumers with the added exploitation of forcing us all to purchase this financial product, under the section of the CBO Report called "Insurers' Strategies to Control Their Spending on Health Care." THEIR spending, not ours. THEIR AFFORDABLE care not ours.
Here are the "strategies," which show not only that Obamacare corrected none of the health and wealth jeopardizing practices of insurers but put the strength of the federal government behind them by forcing us all to purchase this product or pay a tax.
"One way that insurers control their health care spending is limiting their provider networks." -CBO
"Another strategy to control health care costs involves managing enrollees’ use of services more directly. For example, insurers may cover certain expensive services only if they have authorized them in advance; require enrollees to get a referral from their primary care physician before seeing a specialist; decline to cover a more expensive treatment before expensive services or medications from coverage altogether." -CBO
"Over the past 15 years or so, insurers have made more use of a third strategy: increasing cost-sharing requirements and thereby increasing enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending…enrollees in plans with higher cost-sharing requirements face more variability in their health care costs." -CBO
That's the magic of Obamacare, a government backed fleecing of consumers embracing the worst practices of the insurance industry: Narrow networks, managing [to discourage] use of services and exclusions of coverage altogether and requiring more out-of-pocket spending via cost sharing.
The Republicans don't have a plan that will be acceptable for consumers. But, NOT passing a law when you have no plan that meaningfully addresses a crisis is better than pretending you have a plan and passing a law that reinforces and worsens the identified crisis facing consumers (called "strategies" above), which is the Democrats and their Obamacare.
Obama and the Democrats simply wanted to stamp their name on something and unfortunately for us it was in essence the insurance lobby's recommendations of 2008 (AHIP). That lie fostered additional lies as Obama and the Dems justified their new partnership with insurance companies and forced people to be consumers of financial products (insurance) that had already jeopardized the physical and financial health of our nation's citizens. EXCEPT, naturally, they exempted themselves as public employees who made sure their benefits were far better than ours.
There was no humanity in Obamacare and there is no humanity in the Republican plan and this is why it is essential that public employees be constrained and exposed to the same law they're imposing on the citizens who put them in and-or pay for their jobs and benefits.
So, now insurers are blaming President Trump, after they blamed those darn young-healthies not buying their product, screwing up their risk pools and making them actually have to cover people unfortunate enough to need the insurance those very same people had paid for. After they blamed those darn old people daring to need to use medical services at the end of their lives after a lifetime of purchasing and paying into health insurance coverage. After they blamed that darn government that stopped paying them off under reinsurance provisions in the Affordable Care Act.
If you've got an interest in protecting your rights, don't buy in to the garbage that seeks to misdirect and redirect your attention and frustration, instead, read up and speak up and send your Congressman packing because we're paying for 72 percent of their premiums on better plans than will ever be available to us.
