Health insurers plan big Obamacare rate hikes and they blame Trump

[CousinIT]

Health insurers across the country are making plans to dramatically raise Obamacare premiums or exit marketplaces amid growing exasperation with the Trump administration’s erratic management, inconsistent guidance and seeming lack of understanding of basic healthcare issues.

At the same time, state insurance regulators — both Democrat and Republican — have increasingly concluded they cannot count on the Trump administration to help them ensure that consumers will have access to a health plan next year.

The growing frustration with the Trump administration’s management — reflected in letters to state regulators and in interviews with more than two dozen senior industry and government officials nationwide — undercuts a key White House claim that Obamacare insurance marketplaces are collapsing on their own.

Instead, according to many officials, it is the Trump administration that is driving much of the current instability by refusing to commit to steps to keep markets running, such as funding aid for low-income consumers or enforcing penalties for people who go without insurance.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-obamacare-trump-mismanagement-20170518-story.html

[tblue37]

1. K & 5th R for visibility. nt

[flamingdem]

2. Just pathetic, I feel a roiling hatred

based on allowing ACA to be hurt like this.

[central scrutinizer]

3. Malign neglect

Don't need to repeal ACA, just fuck it up so badly through mismanagement that it goes belly up. Then blame Obama.

[thecrow]

4. Kickety

Kick

[snot]

5. My premiums already cost $14,000/year NET of the subsidies.

There are only 2 insurers left in my region, and the best policy you can buy is for an HMO with a network so small that it's next to impossible to stay within it.

I'm afraid I won't be able to buy insurance at all next year, at any price.

I'm healthy, for an old person, but after paying for insurance my whole life, it sux to face not being able to buy it at all, now that I might really need it.

With all respect, this isn't just about hurting the ACA; it's about hurting people.

[progressoid]

6. And repubs will blame Obama.