Just a second while I strap on my spurs because I am about to get on my high horse.
A year ago on this page I wrote about the rising cost of health care because of the Affordable Healthcare Act, otherwise know as Obamacare.
Well, affordable health care is anything but affordable. Premiums are skyrocketing beyond belief and at the same time deductibles are reaching five figures in an effort to curtail rising premiums.
With premiums rising 50-67 percent for 2017, remember that is on top of nearly the same increases for 2016.
Blue Cross recently announced they are dropping 103,000 subscribers — of which I am one — due to substantial losses.
The two other major carriers expected to pick up the bulk of the booted BCBS insured are Medica and Health Partners.
Medica has announced it will only enroll 50,000 new enrollees and no longer pay the agent that sells the new enrollee the policy a commission for doing so. Boy, now that is an incentive to make the sale!
Health Partners basically told outstate Minnesota to take a flying leap because they are limiting their individual health insurance market to the seven-county metro area and the four counties surrounding St. Cloud.
Obamacare and MNsure have been a disaster from the get-go and have cost millions if not billions of dollars, and they are both about to come crashing down.
If you think I’m crying “Wolf” here, give Mike Rothman a call. He is the commerce commissioner for our great state. He said these measures — by that, I mean letting the insurance providers bail on us — were needed to avoid the collapse of the individual health insurance market.
If that isn’t enough, MNsure is making preparation for the onslaught of new enrollees come Nov. 1, when the new open enrollment period begins. We all know how well they handled the initial enrollment period two years ago.
So if you think this can be fixed by the folks that gave us Obamacare, think again. It’s up to us, the voters, to fix this mess. You can start by heading to the voting booth on Nov. 8 and throw out the people in the House and Senate who voted for this mess to start with.
Remember, they’re the ones that decided to pass the Obamacare bill and then read it later.
How has that worked out for you?