There’s an interesting coda to Kathleen Sebelius’s overt threats against health insurers that tell their customers that premium increases are resulting from Obamacare. Sebelius claimed that administration experts had determined that Obamacare’s early provisions would have a “minimal impact on premiums”.
That’s ridiculous on the face of it: if the cost of the new benefits were minimal, insurers would be offering them already. But we needn’t rely on economics and common sense. Sebelius’s own agency found that the new provisions would increase some premiums by as much as 7%. In comparison, the premium increases that she is blasting range from 1% to 9%. Even at the high end of that range, they’re not much higher than HHS’s own estimate.
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