Posted on 10/21/2013 10:19:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Take a look at this chart of Obamacare-forced health insurance rate hikes, produced by the Heritage Foundation. Dark orange denotes the sharpest increases, while blue denotes decreases. Click to enlarge it.
The first thing that jumps out is how few blue lines there actually are. Obamacare was sold as a plan to make health insurance more affordable and more accessible. Only a handfull of Americans live in states where insurance rates will actually decline. In a few of those states, the declines are tiny. Only Colorado, New York and Rhode Island stand to see meaningful declines in health insurance rates.
Another striking feature is where the the sharpest increases will occur. A majority of them are red states.
Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia
The states that will see the next sharpest rate increases are labeled in orange on the chart. Politically, a majority of them are red.
Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin
Virginia’s rate hikes are particularly onerous. Across the board in all age groups, Virginians can expect to see their rates jump by at least 178.7%. Virginians above age 50 will get walloped by a 256.5% increase. Many of them are retired and on fixed incomes.
The following states will see decreases.
Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island
For the most part, these states will see decreases because they have already adopted some version of health care regulations that include mandates similar to Obamacare. One blue state, California, has pushed heavy mandates and yet will see its rates rise from 3.4% to 23.6%, with older Californians seeing half the hike that younger Californians will suffer.
Additionally, the numbers in the first column may doom Obamacare from the start. The law is predicated on the notion that younger Americans, many of whom are healthy, have not started families yet and do not yet buy their own health insurance, will now flock to the Obamacare exchanges and buy insurance in droves. The law depends on them doing that, and may collapse if they do not, as insurance companies will not have enough healthy customers to offset the cost of the unhealthy customers that Obamacare forces them to take on.
But how likely are younger Americans to buy health insurance when the odds are that Obamacare has priced it out of reach? The choice they face, paying hundreds of dollars per month for insurance they don’t need, or paying a fine that starts at $95 for an entire year if they do not buy insurance, will be an easy one. Additionally, millions of them will avoid both the fine and buying insurance by staying on their parents’ insurance until age 26, as Obamacare now allows them to do.
But supposing they do go shop for insurance. First, they’ll face the horror that is HealthCare.gov, and there is no guarantee that they can even create an account and populate the online forms with personal information that will survive HealthCare.gov’s terrible architecture. Second, once they get to the end, they will face sticker shock, with health insurance plans in most states far more expensive then they were before Obamacare.
The general trends that Obamacare forces across the nation look like this: Younger Americans will be forced to pay far higher insurance rates to subsidize older Americans. Healthy Americans will be penalized and forced to pay for unhealthy Americans, those who have pre-existing conditions as well as those who have simply made poor life choices. Red state Americans who did not support Obama’s election and who have never supported Obamacare will be forced to bear the harshest of the law’s onerous costs. In some cases, such as Virginia, the costs add up to a massive tax: Young Virginians will see rates hiked 252.5%. Larger families will be penalized with higher rates, forcing many Americans to downsize their family plans. Many Americans will see their work hours cut or their jobs eliminated so their employers can escape Obamacare’s mandates.
Obamacare is in reality the imposition of blue state policies on red states that, before 2010, had the right to set their own policies as their voters wished.
The 1773 Boston Tea Party was sparked by just a 2% tax levied on the colonies by a faraway government the colonists had no say in electing. That tax, the Stamp Act, only led to a revolution and the overthrow of British rule in America.
Looks like we had to sell a few states to afford the exchanges...
Good! That is what they voted for. Let then enjoy it.
A quick look at the chart leads me to believe that rates decline primarily in states with very high insurance premiums.
New York premiums (adult age 27) were more than 5 times that of Georgia, Kansas, & Idaho. Now, they are less than twice as much.
This is just wealth redistribution from poorer states to richer states.
Or is this insuring illegal Mexicans? The premium hikes correlate to where they’ve invaded.
I live in southwest Virginia and am very conservative. You say I deserve this? Thanks a lot. Most everyone from northern Virginia think the state ends in Roanoke anyway. Maybe that could be the cut off line and we could be added to West Virginia.
So are the “BEFORE” numbers for a comparable policy - i.e. similar coverages and deductible? I assume so, otherwise the comparison would not be that useful.
LOL most of the north east for me
The Tea Party of old was filled with REAL men who would not abide a gov stealing his livelihood and the endangering the health/welfare of his family.
Where are these men now?
I'm beginning to believe that the law is predicated on enough poor people buying heavily subsidized (at taxpayer expense) overpriced policies to offset the unhealthy costomers.
Unless you have a low enough income (or are willing to lie) to qualify for enough of a subsidy to make purchasing an overpriced policy on the exchange, you'd be better off buying a market-priced individual policy directly from an insurance company.
“Where’s Hawaii?”
In the Pacific.
That said, they may be not on the list because they have no exchange yet and don’t expect to for a few more weeks?
The law is predicated on enough healthy young people to subsidize the relatively rich senior citizens.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.