The Obama Administration Explains Why Health Insurance Premiums Are Going Up

I guess all the flacks in the vast Obama administration public relations apparatus are at the beach. What else would explain this inelegant quote from Robert Pear's story today in the New York Times?

The article is ostensibly about the review process that state insurance officials use to approve or disapprove annual premium increases under Obamacare. The real news—reportedpreviously, but it can't be repeated often enough—is that the Rube Goldberg mechanisms of Obamacare are sending insurance premiums into the stratosphere. Pennsylvanians are looking at a 41 percent increase for 2017. In Kentucky, Humana customers will see rates rise 31 percent next year. Blue Cross in Montana seeks a 62 percent increase. Even in Connecticut, deemed one of the great successes of the Affordable Care Act, consumers will likely see rate increases rise more than 20 percent.

Needless to say, this was not what the administration and the law's congressional sausage grinders led us to expect. As recently as last October, they were assuring the public that the cost of the average health insurance plan would rise only 7.5 percent this year.

Normally, with a reporter as good as Robert Pear and an outlet as prominent as the New York Times, the story would feature an exculpatory comment from a high-ranking administration official—maybe even Josh Earnest himself! But it's summertime. Evidently Pear's request for comment bounced all the way down from the White House into the deepest folds of the Department of Health and Human Services, down where the economists dwell. Here's what Pear found:

Aviva Aron-Dine, an economist at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, said predictable factors were behind the upward pressure on rates. For example, the federal government is ending a program that helped pay some of the largest claims incurred by insurers.
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