A Look At 2016 ObamaCare Premiums -- May 16, 2015

Investor Business Times is reporting:

Those who think their current health insurance plans are too expensive should brace themselves for 2016, at least based on the recent predictions of one healthcare executive. Health insurance companies are likely to demand even more money in the coming year from people seeking to buy healthcare.

"You cannot have every doctor in your network, very low copays, broad benefits and lower costs. It just can't work that way," [an analyst] said, calling such demands, including for insurance companies to charge lower premiums or monthly fees that people pay for to have insurance coverage, "unrealistic."

Under the Affordable Care Act, landmark legislation frequently referred to as Obamacare, more than 14 million people in the United States gained health insurance. Nearly 12 million people signed up for health coverage plans on exchanges created under Obamacare, and the law, despite being controversial, has been widely credited with making health insurance and medical care more affordable and accessible to millions across the country. Nearly nine out of 10 adults in the U.S. have health insurance, a Gallup poll published in April showed -- the lowest-ever rate of uninsured people in the United States.

Costs were likely to go up because a high percentage of those who had newly bought health insurance through the Affordable Care Act needed expensive medical care that, until they bought insurance, had been delayed. As a result, health insurers were finding they had to spend more to cover the expensive medical bills, and because fewer younger -- and presumably healthier -- people had signed up for coverage, companies had smaller pool of funding to draw on.

Even as premiums might be about to go up, a study published Thursday by the consumer healthcare nonprofit group Families USA showed that one out of four adults who bought health insurance through exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act skipped necessary medical treatment because the care was too expensive. These adults had paid monthly premiums, some of them subsidized by the government, for health insurance but were nevertheless unable to afford the very care it was supposed to provide.

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ObamaCare: The HealthCare Act That Keeps On Giving

The AP is reporting:

The Health Insurance Providers Fee was aimed at insurance companies. The thinking went: Because insurers would gain a windfall of customers, they ought to help pay for the expansion of coverage. Insurers say they have raised prices for individuals and small businesses to cover the new tax.

As it turns out, they are raising their prices to state Medicaid programs, too.

The federal government issued guidance in October requiring states to build the tax into what they pay for-profit Medicaid health plans that serve low-income people. The first year's tax was due to the IRS in September, and state governments are now settling up with insurance companies.

It works like this: State governments pay insurers for the tax. The insurers then pay the tax to the federal government. The federal government then reimburses part of the cost to the states.

It may sound absurd, but it's not amusing to state governments, which wind up losing 54 cents for every dollar of the insurance tax. State taxpayers end up the biggest losers, without any added benefit to their state's low-income Medicaid patients.

Remember: the health care industry wrote the law. And folks still write to tell me how wrong I am on ObamaCare. Some folks aren't paying attention. 

Too lat now, but the mainstream media is finally paying attention.