WellPoint Study: Insurance Premiums Could Triple Under ObamaCare
According to a state-level study conducted by WellPoint Inc, it is a near-certainty that ObamaCare will cause insurance costs to rise across the board.
At the request of Congressional delegations worried about their constituents—call it a public service—WellPoint mined its own actuarial data to model ObamaCare in the 14 states where it runs Blue Cross plans. The study therefore takes into account market and demographic differences that other industry studies have not, such as the one from the trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, which looked at aggregate national trends.
In all of the 14 states WellPoint scrutinized, ObamaCare would drive up premiums for the small businesses and individuals who are most of WellPoint’s customers. (Other big insurers, like Aetna, focus on the market among large businesses.) Young and healthy consumers will see the largest increases—their premiums would more than triple in some states—though average middle-class buyers will pay more too.Democrats have been selling health care as one huge free lunch in which everyone gets better insurance while paying less. But the policy facts simply don’t add up, and Democrats are attacking WellPoint because they don’t want anyone to understand what their health-care schemes will mean in practice. Democrats know that if the public is given the facts and the time to consider them, Americans might demand that Democrats stop pushing the country off this cliff and start all over.
