Obamacare just raised your health care premium by $63
posted at 12:41 pm on December 11, 2012
by Mary Katharine Ham
If you’re a member of the mainstream media, you’re “surprised” by this in the same way that every bad jobs report is “unexpected.”
Among the regulations being rushed out the door by the Department of Health and Human Services 32 months after Obamacare passed is a requirement that every plan in America be subject to a $63 fee. That $63 is part of a fund to subsidize people with pre-existing conditions, who are more expensive to cover but whose costs must be transferred to healthier individuals in the new system.
Reporting suggests the costs could hit 190 million health care plans held by individuals or provided by employers. The AP:
The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.
Do tell. Who could have predicted this? More on the fund we’re creating:
Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.
The program “is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all,” the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to “contributions” without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.
Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.
The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Mr. Obama’s expansion of coverage to the uninsured.
You see, we’re “lowering medical expenses and premiums for all” by…raising them for pretty much everyone. This is such a sweet deal.
https://hotair.com/archives/2012/12/11/obamacare-just-raised-your-health-care-premium-by-63/
