My must read of the day is "Another day, another Obamacare disaster," by Ed Rogers in the Washington Post:
In a colossal "oh by the way" revelation, last Friday afternoon the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal agency under the United States Department of Health and Human Services (that would be the executive branch run by President Obama), quietly released a report exposing the fact that under Obamacare, two-thirds of Americans who work at small businesses will see their insurance premiums increase.
So this report—which is more than two years late—says over 11 million American workers will have higher health insurance premiums because of Obamacare. Despite the administration’s attempts to, as House Speaker John Boehner put it, "delay and deemphasize" the report, we now have it straight from the Obama administration that Obamacare will raise health-insurance premiums for American workers. That is a far cry from Obama’s 2008 campaign promise that families would see lower health insurance premiums—$2,500 lower, to be exact—under Obamacare.
The revelations in the CMS report matter. Perhaps the best part of Rogers’ piece is how it emphasizes that the administration tried to shove this report under the rug.
The report was two years late, and it was released on a Friday. Not only was it released on a Friday; it was not released in the obvious places, like CMS’s newsroom, where all the other press releases seem to go.
What CMS found is that 65 percent of small businesses will likely see an increase in premium rates—and only 35 percent of small businesses will see them go down. The report assumes that if the employer premiums go up, "the employee contribution will rise as well." So you have small business owners paying higher premiums, and their employees paying more too.
This is a big deal. It’s not what was promised, which seems to be the norm with this law. The administration knows that too, and perhaps that is why they released the report in such a shady manner, hoping no one would notice.