Affordable Care Act Proves Anything But – Delaware Premiums Up 100%

According to investment bank Morgan Stanley’s recent survey of 148 US insurance brokers, health insurance premium prices are increasing dramatically thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

The survey confirms what many Americans already knew. The Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable. Across the nation, states are seeing an average of 11 percent increases in the small group market and an average of 12 percent increases in the individual market.

Other states have experienced price peaks of 10 to 50 percent higher. Delaware, formerly represented by now Vice President Joe Biden, won the rate race with a whopping 100 percent increase.Insurance rates have been seen on the rise since the beginning of 2012, but with the lead-up to Obamacare’s launch, rates simply skyrocketed.

April’s increases are the largest of any of the months surveyed in the past twelve. Morgan Stanley analysts conclude that the sharp upward trends can be laid at the feet of the Affordable Health Care Act, also called Obamacare.

Experts say that several factors are at work in Obamacare that are responsible for what Americans find sometimes cost-prohibitive; provisions which make it impossible for insurance companies to vary premiums between young and old policy holders to more accurately reflect actual cost of care, new benefit designs that require, for example, across-the-board obstetric and pediatric care for even elderly beneficiaries who are far beyond child-bearing age, new excise taxes levied on insurance plans, and finally, commercial underwriting restrictions.

According to a Forbes report by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, ten states show the largest increases in small group markts are: Washington 58 percent, Pennsylvania 66 percent, California 37 percent, Indiana 34 percent, Kentucky 30 percent, Colorado percent, Michigan 27 percent, Maryland 25 percent, Missouri 25 percent, and Nevada 23 percent.

In the same report, Gottlieb says the individual market is similarly situated with the ten most impacted states as; Delaware at 100 percent, New Hampshire 90 percent, Indiana 54 percent, California 53 percent, Connecticut 45 percent, Michigan 36 percent, Florida 37 percent, Georgia 29 percent, Kentucky 29 percent, and Pennsylvania 28 percent.

Prior to being signed into law on March 23, 2010, the Obamacare program was famously sold to the American public with the promise that healthcare would improve and premium costs would go down. Also promised were the options that Americans could keep their doctors and their health care plans if they were happy with them. To date, each of these promises has proven to be false.