HHS Tries – And Fails – To Put Makeup On Their Own Report On The Coming ObamaCare Rate Hikes

We’ve known for months that ObamaCare is causing Americans health insurance premiums to skyrocket while choking off access to doctors.

But last night, Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services tried yet again to defend the train wreck law by announcing prices of insurance products on the 36 new federal exchanges that are required by law to start operating next week (brace yourselves for a bumpy rollout.)

Unsurprisingly, HHS wrote that premiums will be “lower than projected.” Also unsurprisingly, a quick look at what’s going on, when you take it off the spin cycle, reveals that ObamaCare is indeed about to expose millions of Americans to exploding premium prices and rate shock – it’s written right into HHS’ own report.

In order to spin the impending red ink bath that ObamaCare is about to dump the nation into, the report compares the new ObamaCare premiums to hypothetical, government estimates. ““There are literally no comparisons to current rates,” former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin said. “Instead they try to distract with a comparison to a hypothetical number that has nothing to do with the actual experience of real people.”

By looking at real prices that real Americans are paying now, we can clearly see that ObamaCare is about to trigger severe premium increases across the country. Premiums for men and women, particularly young Americans, are set to jump by as much as 305% due to ObamaCare.

Forbes Avik Roy ran the analysis:

“…many 27-year-olds will face steep increases in the underlying cost of individually-purchased insurance under Obamacare. For the states where we have data—the 36 reported by HHS, plus nine others that we had compiled for our map that HHS didn’t report—rates will go up for men by an average of 97 percent; for women, 55 percent. (In the few cases where HHS reported on states that our map includes, we went with HHS’ numbers.) Worst off was Nebraska, where the difference between the cheapest plan under the old system and under Obamacare was 279 percent for men, and 227 percent for women: more than triple the old rate….

“40-year-olds, surprisingly, will face a similar picture. The cheapest exchange plan for the average enrollee, compared to what a 40-year-old would pay today, will cost an average of 99 percent more for men, and 62 percent for women. For this cohort, men fared worst in North Carolina, with rate increases of 305 percent. Women got hammered in Nebraska, where rates will increase by a national high of 237 percent….”

In 6 days, Americans will soon be greeted with exploding insurance prices along with less access to their doctor. It’s time to repeal this train wreck law, and replace it with common sense legislation that will lower health care costs for Americans while keeping government out of the doctor’s office.