Originally Posted by blueash

This article in Forbes was written by an outside contributer from the Pacific Research Institute which describes itself as :
"The Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy promotes the principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility. The Institute believes these principles are best encouraged through policies that emphasize a free economy, private initiative, and limited government."

Books offered for sale on its home page include "The top 10 ways to dismantle and replace Obamacare", "The truth about Obamacare", and "Obama's Education Takeover". The author of those first two books is the same author as the Forbes article. Her well established vehement opposition to the ACA makes her interpretation that the increases in health insurance must be due to the ACA highly suspect.




And this evidence is from the website thenewamerican.com ....That website is the published by the John Birch Society. Look carefully at the words used by Ms Ignagni in her comment on the AHIP website after the Supreme Court decision. She says that the provisions "will have" she does not say "already have" A big difference from what you are suggesting, that the ACA is responsible for premium increases. I am not certain that asking the spokesperson for the insurance industry to place blame for rate increases is a good source for finger pointing. The last place they would point is the profit motive of the insurance industry trying to lock in profits before the provisions limiting their ability to overcharge the consumer kick in.

Between 1999 and 2009 the cost of a family insurance policy increased 131% while inflation was only 28%. The ACA has not lowered costs and undoubtedly a small amount of the increase is due to the provisions already in effect requiring better preventive care, coverage for young adults, and removing the lifetime caps are being passed on the the consumer. Once the ACA is fully implemented we can revisit the question. If you get more healthy people to buy insurance who are likely to be low utilizers of care, would you expect the cost of that insurance to go down compared to what it otherwise would have done?