Home » House Report on Obamacare: Insurance Rates Will Skyrocket to as Much as 400%
Like many conservatives and liberty-minded Americans have long assumed, President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), widely known as Obamacare, is truly not affordable. According to a report by the House of Representative’s Energy and Commerce Committee, insurance rates will grow an average of 100 percent to as much as 400 percent.
The report requested rate information from 17 insurance companies including heavyweights like Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Kaiser Foundation.
A North Carolina family saw their BCBS insurance deductible increase to $1500 per person for each (7) family members last month. The father told me, “we simply cannot afford this. We are now forced to sell our home because we cannot afford this increase.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina released its own report, alerting customers of rate changes. After new federal subsidies and grandfathered plans are factored in, the company expects about two-thirds of its individual market customers to see rate increases similar to those of recent years or decreases in 2014. The remaining one-third of individual market customers will see larger increases because of the Affordable Care Act. These rate changes come because several of the Affordable Care Act’s new requirements will be implemented Jan. 1, 2014.
“Beginning next year, individuals who buy their own health insurance will feel a wide variety of impacts as new components of the ACA take full effect,” said Patrick Getzen, BCBSNC vice president and chief actuary. “The ACA expands access to coverage and increases benefits. This is a good goal, but it comes with a cost. Subsidies will offset the higher cost of premiums for some of our customers, but more sick people in the insurance pool, more benefits, and new taxes and fees will drive rates up.”
Unlike the President’s promises, the Affordable Care Act won’t deliver. The Energy and Commerce Committee report ends, “Despite promises that the law will lower costs, (Obamacare) will, in fact, cause the premiums of many Americans to spike substantially. The broken promises are numerous, and the empirical data reveal that many Americans, from recent college graduates to older adults, will not be able to afford the law’s higher costs.”
These shortcomings are one of the many reasons that conservatives have tried to defund this fraud of a program. According to the Daily Caller, a petition in circulation has reached over 1 million signatures, urging the defunding of Obamacare. The petition movement is being spearheaded by Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee and Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
“The American people are standing up, speaking out and demonstrating their absolute disdain for the unaffordable and unfair train wreck that is Obamacare,” said Lee in a statement.
Democratic Leader Harry Reid needs 60 votes to fund Obamacare, but there are only 54 Democrats in the Senate. If Republicans hold strong, they can stop it.
The petition launched July 27. It took only 37 days to accrue 1 million supporters.
To learn more about the petition or to sign it, click here.
In addition to the petition, 2014 Senate candidates are also being asked to sign a promise to help defund Obamacare. In South Carolina, candidates Lee Bright, Nancy Mace and Richard Cash have signed the pledge. Incumbent Lindsey Graham has not signed the pledge.
The promise includes the following text: “I, ___________, pledge to the taxpayers of the state of ___________, and to the American people, that I will: ONE, support the full repeal of Obamacare (also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act); and TWO, oppose any bill or budget resolution that provides funding to implement or enforce any part of it.”
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