Just don't know wrote:
I am a senior executive at an insurance company that you have heard of (think top 3). Not that I should have to explain my credentials but maybe it will lend my statement of fact more weight.
The idea that Obamacare has increased premiums for working Americans is complete and utter hogwash. It is one of the biggest myths in our society that has been allowed to perpetuate for whatever reason. Premium increases have actually been significantly curbed, so much so in fact, that large insurers like myself can't make our margins work with the poor risk pools we are seeing in the individual market.
The movement towards high deductible "consumer" centric health plans was happening long before and will continue long after Obamacare. Why? Because America has a messed up healthcare system that pays hospital administrators millions of dollars to perform a basic administrative job and we are horribly unhealthy.
Say what you want about Obamacare and Obamacare himself but absolutely don't make false claims completely devoid of fact to further some visceral dislike for something you don't understand. Your "experience" is not s product of Obamacare, it is a product of a trend that has been going on for decades and is at an inflection point which our healthcare system will not survive with meaningful reform.
Oh boy.
There are two root causes of the unsustainable cost inflation of "healthcare" (regardless of how you play the shell game of premiums vs deductibles vs government slush funds to fill insurance company profit gaps vs etc, etc).
1) Health care is a fee-for-service system. The incentive here is not to provide a quick, effective outcome. Fairly obvious.
2) On top of #1, we employ the completely idiotic, ultra-inefficient THIRD PARTY PAYMENT SYSTEM (...that means YOU..."insurers").
Focusing on #2... Health insurance is a major scam. It may not have started out as the health insurers fault way back when, but what it has evolved into is gross. It's not "insurance" at all; it's a "medical payment" industry where a middle man ("insurers") skims money off of each transaction. Add the zero transparency regarding medical pricing, and you have a system in which no one knows or cares what things cost. This makes it impossible to actually allow the market to work toward supply-demand equilibrium, which ultimately generates true "cost" (see any other industry).
Regardless of premium increase figures (see aforementioned shell game being played on the public), the ACA did NOTHING to address these two root causes. Everything else sits on top of these inefficiencies and truly has minimal long-term impact. All of the major provisions (I can go into more detail if needed) of the ACA increase demand for health care across the board. And what does increasing demand for something do?