A top Obama adviser says health insurance rates in Wisconsin will shoot up by 30 percent and thousands of its seniors will see Medicare benefits slashed under Obamacare, according to Forbes.
One of [President Barack] Obama’s key health-care advisers, Jonathan Gruber, found that by 2016, individual premiums in Wisconsin will increase by an average of 30 percent. In addition, Obamacare will deeply cut Medicare Advantage for more than 300,000 Wisconsin seniors enrolled in the program. And 27 percent of Wisconsin physicians say that they will place new or additional limits on accepting Medicare patients.
Wisconsin is not the only swing state that will see skyrocketing premiums under Obamacare. Ohio will see health insurance costs increase by 55 to 85 percentunder Obamacare with 700,000 seniors impacted by Medicare cuts.
Gruber’s analysis stands in direct contradiction to what Obama said about his signature legislation during its passage and on the campaign trail.
"You should know that once we fully implement it … your premiums will go down," he said at an Ohio townhall rally in July.
Obama pledged during the 2008 campaign to pass health care reform that would drive premiums down by $2,500. But Obamacare has had the exact opposite effect, as premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since its passage.
This has not stopped the administration from preserving the old talking point. A White House FAQ page about Obamacare is even more insistent than the president’s campaign.
Q: Will my premiums / costs go up because of health reform?
A: No.
According to the independent and non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, people who get coverage through their employer today will likely see lower premiums.
Reform will lower premiums by reducing administrative costs, increasing competition between insurance companies and creating a larger pool of insured Americans.
The White House claims are cherry picked out of the CBO report, which also estimated that insurance premiums would increase long before they ever went down, according to a Washington Post fact check of Obama’s claims in Cincinnati.
Yes, the CBO says 57 percent of the people in the exchanges will get tax subsidies, but that means 43 percent will not, and thus would not be able to offset any increase in premiums. The CBO also said that subsidies would cover nearly two-thirds of the total premiums.
Moreover, the CBO makes clear that average premiums would be 27 to 30 percent higher because the law demands greater insurance coverage (page 6).
The Post awarded Obama "three Pinocchios" out of a possible four for his fib.
Independent surveys of businesses providing insurance to employees estimates that premiums will increase a further 5.3 percent in 2013 due to Obamacare provisions such as the higher costs associated with allowing adults to stay on their parents’ plans.