It is ironic that the Obama administration is threatening to punish health insurance companies if they tell customers that the new ObamaCare socialized medicine law is forcing up premiums.
Why is that ironic? Because Medicare’s own Office of the Actuary admits that Americans will pay more for their medical care under ObamaCare than they would have paid if the law had not been passed! In addition, the nation as a whole will spend more on health care under ObamaCare than it would have spent without it, according to Medicare officials.
So it is troubling that U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote a letter to the insurance industry vowing retribution if insurers tell clients the new law is raising premiums.
“There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases,” she wrote. “Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections.”
Insurers who cross the government by blaming ObamaCare or implementing what the government considers “unjustified” increases could be left out of government-created insurance markets set to begin in 2014 under the new law. Those markets will provide access to potentially 30 million customers, so an insurer that is excluded would be at a huge disadvantage.
Will some insurers likely raise rates beyond the actual cost increases caused by ObamaCare, and then suggest the increases are entirely ObamaCare’s fault? Yes. But ObamaCare, by the government’s own admission, is undoubtedly a factor in rising costs.
What’s more, the free market – not government bureaucrats – ought to be deciding what constitutes a “justified” versus an “unjustified” rate increase. Washington isn’t competent to perform that task, any more than it is competent to set the price of eggs or shoes or computers.
And the federal government most certainly ought not to be threatening retaliation against companies or individuals for exercising their First Amendment free speech rights to voice opposition to the horrible ObamaCare law. The administration should not be “speech police.”