Are Obamcare premiums about to skyrocket? And, if so, will overall healthcare costs go up due to treating Democrats who have heart attacks or strokes if they see the premiums skyrocket during an election year in which it now appears the Demo could suffer huge losses and maybe lose the Senate?
According to The Hill, rates may soon go up bigtime.
But wait! The original article we linked to has now been revised. But the headline — which we ran in the first version until it was brought to our attention that the original piece in terms of complete accuracy may have been a….piece..has now been REVISED.
Here’s part of the original we ran on TMV earlier:
Health industry officials say ObamaCare-related premiums will double in some parts of the country, countering claims recently made by the administration.
The expected rate hikes will be announced in the coming months amid an intense election year, when control of the Senate is up for grabs. The sticker shock would likely bolster the GOP’s prospects in November and hamper ObamaCare insurance enrollment efforts in 2015.
The industry complaints come less than a week after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sought to downplay concerns about rising premiums in the healthcare sector. She told lawmakers rates would increase in 2015 but grow more slowly than in the past.
“The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act,” the secretary said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee.
Her comment baffled insurance officials, who said it runs counter to the industry’s consensus about next year.
“It’s pretty shortsighted because I think everybody knows that the way the exchange has rolled out … is going to lead to higher costs,” said one senior insurance executive who requested anonymity.
The insurance official, who hails from a populous swing state, said his company expects to triple its rates next year on the ObamaCare exchange.
The hikes are expected to vary substantially by region, state and carrier.
Areas of the country with older, sicker or smaller populations are likely to be hit hardest, while others might not see substantial increases at all.
Several major companies have been bullish on the healthcare law as a growth opportunity. With investors, especially, the firms downplay the consequences of more older, sicker enrollees in the risk pool.
The Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore notes that the original article had mostly blind quotes. Journalists know that blind quotes can be useful, but also risky if a news source doesn’t care about accuracy or has an axe to grind. Kilgore notes:
In an updated version of the article, Vieback does quote by name two experts—who deny the whole premise of her story.
And the “premiums to skyrocket” claim directly contradicts a variety of on-the-record assessments by health insurance executives—e.g., Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Wellpoint president Joe Swedish, and Cigna CEO David Cordani—that the Obamacare premium structure is working out relatively well. And the most reliable independent study, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, concluded that the much-feared “death spiral” of premiums that Vieback seems to be predicting as a reality for much of the country is very unlikely to occur.
Particularly in its revised form, Vieback’s piece has a number of “to be sure” qualifiers that undermine the headline.
And, he notes, the headline of The Hill piece is what’ll get reproduced. We ran a questionmark headline since the original Hill piece didn’t report a certainty. But expect some ideological websites to report prices skyrocketing as a certainty — and they won’t add the updates that change the original report.
From the earlier post:
If rates go way up it’ll be extremely bad news for the Democrats because it’ll add to the charge that Obamacare’s critics weren’t exaggerating about what its impact would be on the health care arrangements and costs for many Americans.
The big issue for some voters will be which party overstated it more: the Republicans (who talked about how harmful it would be) or the Democrats (who talked about how beneficial and easy and cost-saving it would be)? The verdict will come in November.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.