How can this be? Obama has been promising for years rates would go down substantially because of Obamacare.
Via Forbes:
In my search for the truth about how much ObamaCare will increase how many Americans’ health insurance premiums I came upon a frightening map of the United States that projected what the percentage hikes would be state by state for people with individual coverage. The projections, prepared by the Society of Actuaries in March, 2013 predicted some pretty outrageous premium increases for people with individual coverage in the likes of California (62%), Alabama (60%), Texas (34%) and Arizona (41%). Only in New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey would the premiums decline slightly for people with individual coverage, a segment of the market that is expected to increase from 11.9 million people at present to 25.6 million as more Americans sign up for insurance coverage under ObamaCare.
Maybe the computer models used by the Society of Actuaries are just plumb ridiculous and wrong. I printed out the actuarial study entitled “Cost of the Future Newly Insured Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)” and I learned that the Actuaries predict ACA-driven changes in individual market composition of the individual healthcare market could drive up underlying claims costs by an average of 32% nationally by 2017.” Moreover the projections showed double-digit increase in 42 of 50 states over the next four years.
These projected increases, which you won’t hear the White House mentioning, are due to “the fact that premiums are driven primarily by the underlying cost of medical care and not health plans administrative costs and profits.” In general, the states expected to have large jumps in the premium now have “low current individual costs and those having high current individual costs” will show decreases.