We are nearing the train wreck that is the implementation of ObamaCare, and here is what Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina is saying.
However, Blue Cross did disclose that insurance costs for employees who work for businesses with 1 to 50 employees will rise by about 18 percent in 2014 because of increased coverage and benefits, as well as eight new taxes and fees in the Affordable Care Act. But the effects on small businesses are so wide-ranging that they will result in reductions as deep as 41 percent and increases as high as 284 percent.
“More sick people in the insurance pool, more benefits, and new taxes and fees will drive rates up,” Blue Cross said in a statement.
Carolina Journal’s Dan Way recently reported on what’s to come.
The Cato Institute’s Tanner said the size of crowd-out caused by the health care exchanges is important because he believes the system will have an expensive, negative impact in the health insurance market.
“First of all, if these things drive up the cost of insurance, which they’re likely to do, the subsidies aren’t going to be sufficient to pay the costs anyway,” Tanner said. “Probably a third or more of the people … are going to end up paying a lot more for insurance than they’re paying today, even with the subsidy.”
Already, without the regulations and revenue streams for Obamacare fully developed, the Congressional Budget Office is saying the program will have a $2.5 trillion cost in its first 10 years, three times the initial price tag promised by Obama, Tanner said.
As it stands, insurers in North Carolina who want to sell policies on the federal exchange would pay a 3.5 percent premium surcharge to do so. Insurance companies are likely to raise rates on employer-provided coverage to offset those costs.
“That’s money coming out of the workers’ wages one way or another — in lost wages or lost jobs,” Tanner said. “One way or another, employers will offset that cost. They don’t eat it. They pass that cost on to employees.”
