Obamacare rates going up significantly for 2016.

By Rob Janicki
Liberals are going to have trouble with the latest news of Obamacare premium costs rising in 2016.

Health insurance companies around the country are seeking rate increases of 20 percent to 40 percent or more, saying their new customers under the Affordable Care Act turned out to be sicker than expected. Federal officials say they are determined to see that the requests are scaled back.

Yes, I can imagine that the Obama administration will fight tooth and nail with health insurance companies to knock back those requested rate increases.  Meanwhile, liberal talking heads will assure the ignorant among us and the liberal fellow travelers that all is well and Obamacare has managed to bend the cost curve of health insurance costs.  The problem is that they will fail to mention that the cost curve for Obamacare health insurance premiums are trending higher, not lower.  Of course, the liberal comeback will be along the lines that Obamcare has slowed down the rise of health insurance costs to a greater extent than at anytime in the past 50 years.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans — market leaders in many states — are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee and 54 percent in Minnesota, according to documents posted online by the federal government and state insurance commissioners and interviews with insurance executives.

Jesse Ellis O’Brien, a health advocate at the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group, said: “Rate increases will be bigger in 2016 than they have been for years and years and will have a profound effect on consumers here. Some may start wondering if insurance is affordable or if it’s worth the money.”

Combine the rising costs of Obamacare health insurance premiums, the copays and the extraordinarily high deductibles and Americans will be faced with crushing costs that may put health insurance out of reach for many people, even those receiving subsidies.

In the face of these health insurance carrier rate increase requests, President Obama has been out stumping America to persuade health insurance consumers to contact their state insurance commissions to put pressure on health insurance carriers to scale back their rate increase requests.  Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Matthews Burwell chimed in with this, when she

said that federal subsidies would soften the impact of any rate increases. Of the 10.2 million people who obtained coverage through federal and state marketplaces this year, 85 percent receive subsidies in the form of tax credits to help pay premiums.

The problem is that these subsidies are paid for by taxpayers, which means that those taxpayers who might be able to afford Obamacare, are the ones who are being saddled with subsidizing those who can't afford the rising costs of Obamcare.  Sounds like another liberal redistribution of wealth scam.

Obamacare is quite likely the most complex legislation ever passed and cannot be adequately illustrated in these few paragraphs.  Read the entire New York Times article, even with its biases, to get a much better understanding of how Obamacare will be faring in the near future as mounting cost pressures make Obamacare less likely to meet all its advertised benefits under the title of the act as being affordable health insurance.