The efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act known commonly as Obamacare seem simply endless.
Sometimes that’s the result of partisanship: Many Republican politicians in state and federal government just can’t move past the idea that a health care plan pushed by Democrats and especially President Barack Obama had and has growing American consumer use and respect.
And sometimes the effort to undermine the law that brought affordable insurance to millions of Americans is just a matter of corporate appetite among medical providers and the middlemen of the insurance industry – most of whom show a profit at the end of each year, even if they are nonprofit like Erlanger hospital or BlueCross BlueShield.
This week, headlines trumpeting that ACA exchange rates would “skyrocket” as BlueCross BlueShield announced it will increase premiums by 62 percent (Cigna and Humana are increasing rates by 46 and 44 percent, respectively) made it sound as though the sky is falling for all of us. Especially with this attendant quote by Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander:
“Tennesseans cannot afford 44 to 62 percent Obamacare price increases that will force them to make difficult decisions about their daily lives and their family budgets. They should not have to pay the price for a terrible health care law and the refusal by Democrats in Washington to see what is plainly obvious – that Obamacare is failing.”