He Predicted Obamacare Wouldn’t Be ‘Affordable.’ Democrats Didn’t Listen.
DailySignal: Robert Laszewski is a policy adviser and analyst for the health insurance industry. He’s correctly predicted Obamacare’s pitfalls since Day One.
Heritage
In an interview with “Full Measure” this Sunday, Laszewski says he warned the Obama administration and other Democrats not to call it the “Affordable Care Act.” Earlier this week, the administration announced Obamacare premiums are spiking 25 percent.
Here’s a transcript from our interview:
Laszewski: The future is not good. The fundamental problem is not enough healthy people have signed up to pay for the sick, and not enough healthy people have signed up because the insurance plans that people are being offered just simply aren’t of good value.
Attkisson: What do customers see as wrong with the insurance product?
Laszewski: The insurance products consumers see are still too expensive in terms of premium. And the deductibles and copays are too high.
Attkisson: Can you explain in simple terms how the insurance companies are losing so much money if they’re charging so much for premiums and if deductibles are so high?
Laszewski: It’s real simple. If you only provide a health insurance plan that the sickest people buy, you can’t charge enough. You can never charge enough.
Attkisson: At it’s core, it was supposed the provide affordable insurance for everybody who needed it.
Laszewski: Yes. The Affordable Care Act was supposed to ensure that whether you were employed or unemployed or self-employed, you would have access to affordable health insurance. For someone who’s not getting a subsidy, who’s paying the full cost of the insurance, it’s likely they are now paying about double what they paid before under the old market, where only healthy people could get in.
>> Find out when and where you can watch “Full Measure”
DailySignal
**** Either way, taxpayers are in fact on the hook to offset costs regardless of how they are applied. Socialized payment system for a broken system.
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Minnesota could spend up to $300M to offset ObamaCare hikes
TheHill: Minnesota’s Democratic governor wants to pour as much as $300 million into a relief fund for people facing massive premium hikes under ObamaCare in his state next year.
Gov. Mark Dayton proposed Thursday that he would offer “rebates” to help offset the 55 percent increase in healthcare premiums that ObamaCare customers will face in Minnesota this year.
The money would be taken out of Minnesota’s “rainy day fund,” which got a boost from the state’s budget surplus last year.
But Dayton was clear that his state would need a longer-term solution to make ObamaCare plans more affordable.
Dayton is the first governor in the country to announce his own plan to tackle rising premiums this year, which are far steeper than any of the previous year’s increases. The state’s final plan will also include input from the state’s Republicans, who are working on their own proposals to address panic over the premiums.
With the new rebates, Dayton said the rate increase would be limited to an average of 16 percent — below the national average of 22 percent. Last year, the national average for premium hikes was about 7 percent.Minnesota has attracted national attention this year as it faces one of the highest premium hikes in the country. Dayton himself came under scrutiny on the issue of healthcare after he declared earlier this month that the “Affordable Care Act is no longer affordable.” Under pressure from fellow Democrats, he later walked back his remarks.
In his lengthy statement on Thursday, Dayton vigorously defended ObamaCare while also acknowledging the law is “now causing very difficult financial problems” for some people.
