If you’ve found out that your health insurance premiums are going up in price under Obamacare, we’ve got some folks you can blame for that – and none of them are named Obama.
Lots of people in North Carolina are finding that their health insurance costs will be going down, thanks to federal subsidies included as a big part of the Affordable Care Act. Others, not so much. If you are, say, upper middle class or wealthier, chances are that your rates are going up. I have a liberal Democrat neighbor who’s “starting to think twice” about Obamacare because his rates are going up more than 50 percent. He’s frustrated and rightfully so. He’s probably not as frustrated, however, as N.C. Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin.
- sushi♥in a (Flickr Creative Commons)
Raleigh’s News & Observer reports that Goodwin is incensed at not being able to do anything to help people get insurance through the exchange, but N&O editorial page editor Ned Barnett points to the real problems: the GOP majority in the General Assembly and Gov. Pat “Why me, Lord?” McCrory.
When the legislature and McCrory rejected the feds’ offer of billions of dollars to expand Medicaid to about 500,000 low-income North Carolinians, they also nixed the idea of setting up a state-run exchange to sell insurance to individuals. That means that the state insurance commission could not set up what the N&O called “a more nimble exchange focused on North Carolina’s needs.” The state had to forgo $27 million in D.C. money that would have been used to educate and assist the estimated one million North Carolinians who are thought likely to look on the exchange for health insurance.
The overall result of the N.C. GOP’s snit over Obamacare? Goodwin didn’t get to set up an exchange that would attract more insurance companies. As it is, the only competition for your friend and mine, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, is Coventry Health, which only offers plans in 39 of the state’s 100 counties. Less competition in our state translates to higher rates, largely because insurance companies are skittish about joining exchanges in states that refused to expand Medicaid. As Barnett explains, thanks to our fine legislature and governor, thousands of people near the poverty level weren’t picked up by Medicaid as planned. Lower income folks generally have less preventative care and more chronic conditions, and that fact made the state’s insurees riskier for insurance companies.
The General Assembly still has time to get with the program and thus let N.Ç. citizens’ healthcare insurance prices drop. That would require a change of heart by the halfwits in the legislature, of course, and that won’t happen unless citizens let them know that’s what they want their representatives to do.
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This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2013.
I hope you offer a good deal on Cher tickets like Michael Buble?? That would be great!!
“…and none of them are named Obama.” HOLY SHIT?!?! Are you serious? He sold us this load of utter political horseshit. IT IS ALL HIS FAULT!!!! He signed it. He owns it. It is his bill. Even YOU call it “Obamacare”. But nice of you to notice that it is doing exactly what we said it was going to do….raise the cost of health insurance and health care.
D.B Cooper, did he also vote for all members of the congress and senate? He proposed the bill, he did NOT make it law! Good try though on being a part of the bitter
D.B.Cooper:
Research it carefully. This is not the bill the President proposed. HR3200 in the House much more closely followed his plan. THIS law was written by Harry Reid. It became law because after it was initially passed by the Senate, the Republicans gained one seat so it would not be possible to pass a compromise bill between the two houses. So it was this bill or nothing. So actually, your friends in the Republican party are responsible for you getting THIS law.
The President’s and the House bill created a government program like Medicare for the people that the insurance companies didn’t want to cover.
Robin and DLP: Obama signed the ACA Bill passed by the House and the Senate without a single Republican vote. Then Obama SIGNED IT INTO LAW. That means OBAMA MADE IT A LAW. Do you understand anything about Government? You want to blame the Republcians for this? Really? You guys must be huffing paint. This is ALL the Democrats fault. It is theirs and no one elses.
The House voted for it and the President signed it because the alternative was no health care law at all. Do YOU understand anything about government? The GOP had picked up ONE seat in the Senate giving them the ability to stop any change to the law from being passed in the Senate. The Republicans are not offering a different plan, they are demanding NO health care law at all.
Yeah, Obama is the reason my rates are going from $353 per month to $897 per month.