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The Day Your Healthcare Died - Obamacare's Implosion in 2017

We will witness the death of Obamacare in 2017 as the ACA falls into its own death spiral

If "The Day the Music Died" as sung by Don McLean was when Buddy Holly crashed in a chartered airplane in 1959, we will be able to sing about a similar death of your health insurance that started in January of 2016.  Unfortunately, our healthcare system's death isn't one that will suddenly end in just one terrible event, our system's death will probably last several long and painful years.  The beginning of the end can be marked by Blue Cross Blue Shield's decision to terminate all PPO coverage for individual plans in Texas and replace it with a managed care HMO network.  Competitors of Blue Cross quickly followed suit, leaving Texans grasping at straws and hoping to find anything that could cover them with a large doctor and hospital network.  Unfortunately, many still don't understand how limited options are and won't until they need emergency health care.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act we've been writing that the law did nothing to control health care costs and thus was a waste of time and truthfully an effort to take people's money and subsidize others.  Oddly, things would have been better if the country would have simply offered free coverage to the poor rather than destroying the system that was actually working for many.  Now, we have a health insurance system that is offering small networks, higher deductibles, lower material benefits, and premiums that are almost 200% greater than just a few short years ago.  The worst part is that the pain is not over.  2017 will usher in a new set of significant actions that will further reduce choice, cost more, and result in an actual reduction in the number of insureds.

2015 Obamacare Pricing Analysis - Where's The Savings?

House of Card - ACA Pricing Analysis - Rate Increase Again

Remember all of the promises you were told when politicians were attempting to pass the Affordable Care Act?  Can you recall all of the great benefits we'd see with the passage of the landmark piece of legislation?  I certainly remember many of the lofty goals and utopian outcomes our leaders told us would come to pass if we simply trusted government to take the reins of one our biggest national industries.

While we must allow the law to really make its impact felt before we can make a final judgment on the merits of its ability to improve healthcare quality and increase accessibility, we can weigh in on the major area that all of us feel monthly, which is our health insurance premiums. 

As we've noted several times in the last month, Open Enrollment begins this weekend and we'll be able to get our first view of the pricing of 2015 health insurance plans.  Fortunately, I've been able to get an advanced look at what we'll call "solid estimates" and the results are frankly.....exactly the same as before or worse!  In the past years before Obamacare we would typically expect annual rate increases of 6% to 10% each year.  Sometimes those rates would only climb 4%, and bad years would see 12% hikes.  We've all been told that the Affordable Care Act would "bend the cost curve" and make healthcare more affordable since services would be spread across a larger pool of insured people as the losses providers felt from serving the uninsured went away.  Unfortunately, we're too early to see any real impact or we were simply lied to.