Obamacare To Unveil "Price Shock" One Week Before The Elections
By Tyler Durden
The writing was on the wall long before the largest US insurer, UnitedHealth, decided to pull the plug on Obamacare in mid April. Then, just a week later, Aetna’s CEO said Thursday that his company expects to break even, but legislative fixes are needed to make the marketplace sustainable.
“I think a lot of insurance carriers expected red ink, but they didn’t expect this much red ink,” said Greg Scott, who oversees Deloitte’s health plans practice. “… A number of carriers need double-digit increases.”
It gets better.
One week ago Marilyn Tavenner, who until January 2015 ran the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, aka the massive Federal agency that oversaw the rollout of Obamacare and the disastrous implementation of HealthCare.gov and who is now as an insurance lobbyist, said she sees big jumps in Obamacare insurance premiums.
Translation: insurers are not making money, and they need to make money or Obamacare is doomed. Which means even more dramatic rate hikes are about to be unveiled. However, it’s not the what but rather the when that is the shock. And, as Politico reports, the timing could not possibly come at a worse time for Democrats.
“Proposed rate hikes are just starting to dribble out, setting up a battle over health insurance costs in a tumultuous presidential election year that will decide the fate of Obamacare.”
The headlines are likely to keep coming right up to Election Day since many consumers won’t see actual rates until the insurance marketplaces open Nov. 1 — a week before they go to the polls.
That’s right: just one week before the election date, Americans will be served with what now appears will be double (if not more) digit increases in their insurance premiums. Politico is spot on in saying that “the last thing Democrats want to contend with just a week before the 2016 presidential election is an outcry over double-digit insurance hikes as millions of Americans begin signing up for Obamacare.”
They will have no choice: following years of actual delays to avoid a major public backlash on the critical mandate, this time the hammer is set to fall and it will do so at the worst possible time for Hillary Clinton.
“Any reports of premium increases will immediately become talking points on the campaign trail,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president for special initiatives at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. “We’re in an election where the very future of the law will be debated.” Democrats say they will mount a vigorous defense of a law that has provided 20 million people with coverage — and point to Republicans’ failure to propose any coherent alternative to Obamacare.
Which is another way to say Democrats are near panic.
“The Republicans will try to make Clinton own the higher prices, but the problem is that Republicans have no alternative or answer,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “They are in the position of taking away insurance if they repeal Obamacare.”
Somehow we doubt that would …read more
Source: Obamacare To Unveil "Price Shock" One Week Before The Elections
