The apparent costs of Obamacare are going up. And up, and up. How much additional cost will the average private payer see in the coming year? The Society of Actuaries, according to The Wall Street Journal, has issued a new report “warning that the cost of medical claims in the new individual-insurance market could rise by an average of 32% per person over the first few years the law is in place” with changes “very different depending on the state” (emphasis added). The Associated Press describes the study as a “political headache” for the Obama Administration rather than a headache for the average American.
With numbers like these it’s not surprising that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has finally owned up to the fact that the so-called Affordable Care Act may be producing something less affordable for U.S. citizens. However, she sells it as citizens purchasing a higher value product overall, which, for the poor, is subsidized by the government. In reality, government subsidies for health care mean that someone—usually from the richer side of the equation—ends up paying to cover for the poorer masses. “These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market,” said Secretary Sebelius to reporters on Tuesday (emphasis added). “But we feel pretty strongly that with subsidies available to a lot of that population that they are really going to see much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.”
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