Major Price Increases Coming to Obamacare in 2017

by  V Saxena

The woman who ran Obamacare during her tenure as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which played a pivotal role in implementing the failed program, claimed last week that health care customers could be in for a huge sticker shock come 2017.

“I’ve been asked, what are the premiums going to look like?” Marilyn Tavenner, who now works as a spokeswoman for insurers, said during an interview with the Morning Consult. “I don’t know, because it also varies by state, market, even within markets.”

She added, “But I think the overall trend is going to be higher than we saw previous years … that’s my big prediction.”
 

Since its launch in 2013, Obamacare has repeatedly caused premiums, co-payments and deductibles to skyrocket, despite rhetoric from President Barack Obama’s administration about how the law would reduce health care costs for Americans. Instead, it spurred many Americans to drop out of the program altogether and opt for much more affordable but less comprehensive non-Obamacare alternatives.
 

In explaining why rates keep rising, Tavenner pointed to a number of factors, including Obamacare’s rules preventing insurers from denying coverage to anyone suffering from a pre-existing condition.  “The problem with the exchanges … is people are still kind of seeing this as, ‘I use insurance when I’m sick, but I may not need it when I’m no longer sick,'” she explained. “So they tend to churn. And that churn increases premiums. So you have to kind of price over that.”

Tavenner also highlighted the upcoming end of certain rules that protected insurers from experiencing financial losses. Without these rules in place, many insurers will need to dramatically raise their premiums just to break even, let alone earn a profit.

President Obama will keep claiming otherwise until his face turns blue, but Obamacare is an epic failure — and clearly, the woman who used to run it pretty much agrees.