Government Hit List Is Being Developed

As a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs-President Obama said "We knew that" at his press conference Friday in response to a question about rising health spending. 

That wasn't how he sold the plan,but, anyway, that's a truism.  Heres another: The White House was always going to blame insurance companies for any cost increases, even when it's own policies cause them.

Witness Kathleen Sibelius's Thursday letter to America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group-a thuggish message even by her standards.  The Health and Human Secretary wrote that some insurers have been attributing part of their 2011 premium increases to Obama Care and warned them that:"There would be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases."

Zero tolerance for expressing an opinion, or offering an explanation to policyholders?  They're more subtle than this in Caraces.

What Ms. Sibelius really means is that the government will prohibit insurers from doing business if reality is not politically convenient for Democrats. Obama Care includes a slew of mandated benefits for next year, such as allowing children to remain on their parents plan until they are 26 and "free" preventive care (IE, no direct out-of-pocket cost sharing for consumers.) The tone of Ms. Sibelius's letter suggests that she doesn't understand that money is exchanged for goods and services, and that if Congress mandates new benefits, premiums will rise.

The Administration estimated that these regulations should increase all premiums by 1% to 2% on average.  That isn't what insurers are finding in practice in the local, price sensitive individual and small business insurance markets, where coverage is typically less comprehensive to hold down costs.
For some current policies in some states, the one-year increase jumps as much as 9%,

Obama Care gives Ms. Sibelius's regulators the power to define "unreasonable" premium hikes, which will mean whatever they decide it will mean later this fall. She promised to keep a list of insurer's "with a record of unjustified rate increases" and then to bar them from Obama Care's subsidized "exchanges" when they come on line in 2014. In other words, insurers must except price controls now or face the retribution of a de facto ban on selling their products to consumers four years from now.

Democrats built this system and now they own it politically.  The least they could do is to take credit for it's consequences.  It seems to me that the Obama Administration is hell bent on driving all of these people out of business so he can have his single payer plan which he has always wanted.