BAD NEWS: Obamacare Premiums Expected To Spike 18%

Obamacare has become an afterthought in the news after the Republican Party’s system-wide failure to repeal and replace the law (which they never really seemed interested in doing in the first place). Meanwhile, the monstrous law is continuing to collapse, highlighted by two recent pieces of bad news.

Take this Friday report from the Washington Free Beacon: the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is expecting premiums to spike by 15% in 2018 and an additional two million people will be uninsured.

“The budget office projects that average premiums will total $3,400 for a 21-year-old, $4,800 for a 45-year-old, and $9,800 for a 64-year-old this year,” the Free Beacon reports.

The report does note that most people on the exchanges won’t feel the increase’s effects because they’re covered by Obamacare subsidies, but there are still millions of people who will be squeezed by the premium increases who aren’t covered by the subsidies — and they’ll most definitely feel a major pinch.

It only gets worse from there. According to another report from the Free Beacon, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is projecting that there are going to be 63 counties in 2018 that won’t have any Obamacare insurers:

The first map the agency created on June 9 showed there would be 47 counties with no insurer participating.

Since that time, the number of counties with no insurer participating in Obamacare has fluctuated, dropping to even zero at one point on September 6. During this time, many articles came out criticizing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) for saying there were counties in the United States that had no insurer participating.

Recent data from the agency, however, shows that now there are even more counties with no choice than ever before.

“This map currently shows that nationwide 63 counties are projected to have no issuers, representing over 70,000 Americans in these counties that could be without coverage on the Exchanges in 2018,” the report said. “It is also projected that 1,472 counties—over 45 percent of counties nationwide—could have only one issuer in 2018. This could represent more than 2.6 million Exchange participants with only one health insurance option, which means they will not have any choices.”

These two pieces of news show that Obamacare’s death spiral is still well under way, despite leftists’ best attempts to deny that it’s occurring. The fact is, Obamacare’s structure was doomed to fail from the get-go; its onerous regulations are causing premiums to rise, resulting in fewer people having insurance, despite the individual mandate. As the risk pool becomes full of sicker individuals, premiums rise further.

The law’s defenders would likely counter that the CBO report points to “uncertainty about whether federal funding for certain subsidies that are currently available will continue to be provided,” but doesn’t the insurers’ dependence on subsidies show how costly Obamacare is?

If Republicans were smart, they would seize on the latest Obamacare news and take their case to the American people as to why nothing short of full repeal is acceptable. Instead, the Senate Republicans are trying to rally around “a stabilization bill for Obamacare.”

Sigh.

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