And you thought Hurricane Sandy was bad?
Hey, does anyone remember President Obama’s promise that health insurance premiums would fall by $2,500 a year for a family if Congress passed Obamacare? Probably not, because that prognostication is going so woefully wrong that the mainstream media has not dropped it into the memory hole.
But Virginians will have reason to recall the president’s words soon enough if the forecast of Merrill Matthews and Mark Litow is correct. Virginia is one of a dozen low-cost states where they expect health care premiums to skyrocket in 2014 when the full impact of Obamacare is felt. How bad will the increases be? Between 65% and 100%, with the sharpest rise in the individual market and more moderate rises for employees of self-insured companies.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Matthews and Litow expect the dirigists in Washington to blame everyone but themselves — greedy doctors, greedy hospitals, greedy insurance companies. Funny, isn’t it, how greed seems to run so rampant in industries where the geniuses in our Imperial Capital think they can do a better job of running things than the people in the industry themselves.
— JAB
