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Thursday, October 10, 2013
News Healthcare coverage going up?
Posted By John Grooms on Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 2:58 PM
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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