In the first look at how insurers plan to adjust prices in the second year under the federal health-care law, filings from Virginia carriers show they are opting for premium increases in 2015 that will pinch consumers’ pocketbooks but fall short of some bigger rate predictions.
The new premium proposals, detailed in official filings to the state’s insurance regulator, show health plans all opting for some increases.
The filings show insurers’ planned increases easily outpacing broader U.S. inflation, but shy of the much larger boosts some critics predicted.
Whirrrrrr! OK, that might be unfair, although one hears stories about the WSJ’s news section. The basic problem for Democrats, however, is that there’s all that pesky video of Barack Obama promising US voters that their premiums were going to go down after Obamacare. Going down.
(Barack Obama… didn’t really understand the implications of YouTube, did he?)
Not ‘going up faster than inflation, but not as badly as some people were saying.’ And while you can get away with saying ‘decrease’ when you mean ‘less increase than expected’ when it comes to the budget, that trick doesn’t work nearly as well when it involves people’s paychecks*. Whether in Virginia, or anywhere else.
Via @allahpundit.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*On a related note: stuff like this is why I am not overly sweating over that entire ‘8 million signup thing’ that has Obama apologists desperately mast… ah, ‘so grimly optimistic.’ Well, that and the fact that apparently three quarters of Obamacare signups were previously insured**. I think that I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: if those people were happy about the enforced switch-over, we’d know by now. It’s not like the Democrats aren’t looking for good news on that front right now.
**No, that wasn’t the plan.
Ummm, Moe? Not to over-kvetch or something, but it’s interesting to look at *why* rates “aren’t increasing as fast as some predicted”.
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Networks are shrinking, doctors are suddenly finding existing patients are no longer covered, and vice versa.
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“Just like the gypsy woman said!”*
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Mew
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* soon to be a classical reference
Let me confirm what you hear about the “news” stories in the WSJ. We started taking it after dumping our local lefty paper the day after the 2008 election. It took awhile, but it’s clear that the “news” section of the WSJ ‘slants’ Dem/left. The editorial page is bearable – except when it’s not – as in their amnesty pushes to aid Big Business for cheap labor.
Not ‘going up faster than inflation, but not as badly as some people were saying.’
Ah, yes. High praise, indeed.
True story: My friend Ed was at a family gathering, talking trash about a relative who wasn’t present, when his prissy cousin interrupted him. “Edward, if you can’t say something nice about someone, you really shouldn’t say anything at all,” she sniffed. Ed stared at her for about thirty seconds, conspicuously not saying anything, and then his face lit up. “You know, Diane, you don’t sweat much for a fat lady!”
Obamacare doesn’t suck as much as the foreign policy disasters of the Obama administration. Almost, but not quite.