Yep, you read the headline correctly. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, the state’s premier insurance company, is requesting a premium hike for as much as 30% for some North Carolina residents.
The state’s largest health insurer plans to hit some members with sharp rate increases again next year, blaming changes from the health overhaul and rising medical costs.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina asked state regulators Thursday for permission to increase rates an average of 6.97 percent for its 300,000 individual members in the state. That’s the lowest proposed annual increase since 2007. About 28,000 people would see their rates decrease, including women in their early 20s.
But rates for some children, men and older members will increase 30 percent or more.
The News & Observer
Confused? Are you asking yourself how this could happen? I mean, we passed the health care bill. It was absolutely dire we pass the health care “reform” bill to lower the cost of health insurance in this country, right? Sure, if you were stupid enough to buy up that crap hook, line, and sinker.
It’s partly because of increasing medical costs and more people using expensive services, but also because the new federal health law is forcing changes such as eliminating annual or lifetime limits on coverage, expanding dependent care for children until age 26 and more, McDonnell said.
“With everything that’s been added, you can’t really expect costs to go down,” he said.
Get outta town! You mean when we force insurance companies to cover people’s pre-existing conditions and do away with caps and make them cover their 26 year old “children” it’s going to cost the rest of us more, not less? Like, real math at play here?
The rising rates will likely force more people in North Carolina to cut back on coverage or go without, said Adam Linker, a policy analyst with the N.C. Justice Center’s Health Access Coalition. And some of the additional “safety net” measures of the federal law won’t start until 2014, he added.
Ah, but you can’t go without! That’ll be illegal! Remember that whole individual mandate? If you don’t purchase health insurance coverage the IRS will come knocking at your door.
Folks, the promises made by President Obama and his minions at the Kremlin was nothing but a ruse. They knew this was going to happen. They know you can’t throw 30 million people into the system and spend less money. All of this was orchestrated. The far left in this country has wanted a single payer universal health care system just like Europe for years and that is exactly the idea. In passing ObamaCare, the Democrats have created a bureaucratic monster that will make health care so much more painful than it has been that they’re banking on the American people just throwing up their hands and crying to the government to fix “the fix.” That fix will be single payer. The government created the problem and they will use a socialist government solution to fix it.
The DNC and this administration knows that ObamaCare will not lower health care costs and that is why they are telling their members who are fighting for their reelections to no longer talk about the cost aspect of the health care bill, but instead use sympathetic, tear jerker stories of Tiny Tim who now, thanks to ObamaCare, can kick away that crutch and walk again.
The presentation’s final page of “Don’ts” counsels against claiming “the law will reduce costs and deficit.”
The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.
“People can be moved from initial skepticism and support for repeal of the law to favorable feelings and resisting repeal,” it says. “Use personal stories — coupled with clear, simple descriptions of how the law benefits people at the individual level — to convey critical benefits of reform.”
The presentation also counsels against the kind of grand claims of change that accompanied the legislation’s passage.
“Keep claims small and credible; don’t overpromise or ‘spin’ what the law delivers,” it says, suggesting supporters say, “The law is not perfect, but it does good things and helps many people. Now we’ll work [to] improve it.”
Politico
A majority of the country still opposes this bill so we have only two roads left to which we can turn. One, we can rely on the Republicans to take over Congress and then the presidency by 2013 and repeal this disaster, but will they have the testicular fortitude to actually go through with it? It’s hard to say. Typically, they’re nothing but a bunch of gutless wonders. The only other hope is that the Supreme Court strikes it down. It should be struck down on Constitutional grounds, but their idea of what is and isn’t Constitutional these days is always a craps shoot. Even if they find the mandate to be unconstitutional, which I think is the most likely result of these lawsuits, it doesn’t mean that the whole legislation will be voided.
Senator Kay Hagan, the lone Democratic Senator of the Carolinas voted for this train wreck, so be sure to call her office and let her know how you feel about it. You can find the information here.
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