That´s always the reason that big government doesn´t work. It wasn´t BIG enough. If only the government had absolute control of everything and everyone.....then it would work, but not until then.

Old story and a bad one.

State insurance regulators had to practically beg for rate increases but under Obamacare,it´s become a no holds barred in raising premiums,making insurance even more unaffordable for business and individuals.

What happens when people drop out of buying insurance is low risk people are the ones bailing ,leaving a pool of high risk people,which causes rates to go even higher.The costs of having the take pre existing conditions is obliterating the entire insurance model that took decades to come up with the right formulas.

This was pure liberal utopianism without regard to real world costs.High risk people should have been excluded from general insurance altogether and come up with government funding for them instead.

It is not really insurance when you must issue a policy when the individual discovers they are sick and cover that person for the same rate as a healthy individual. Insurance is sharing a risk not paying for a certainty! Can you buy fire insurance when your house is already burning down?

A badly written bill put together by clueless congressional aids, shoved through Congress against the people´s will and intended to plunge us into socialism (after Obama´s re-election of course). Not even the Feds understand what is in this so they are floundering around and issuing waivers in every direction. As this unfolds there is going to be more horror on people´s faces every day. The Democrats are going to pay a price for this but the damage will never fully be undone.

Who would have guessed that mandating that the sickest folks get everything they want or need anytime they want it and paid for by younger healthy people would run into trouble?

Thank you, John Roberts, you despicable traitor.

This was the intent all along for Mr. Obama. Perhaps some who voted for it were duped but if so, they will continue to be duped as we face the results of this despicable law.

John Roberts will go down in history as a traitor to the U.S Constitution. In a word, this fresh hell called Obamacare would have went down as the biggest blunder of a corrupt-filled administration. Instead, it has emboldened the left to turn this country into their Socialist/Communist utopia that will never recover in our lifetime. I hope he has guilt pinges the rest of his life. Then he can take it up with St. Peter.

cant blame the repubs for OCARE....

Thanks Roberts . . . you really stuck it to us this time. Enjoy your freshly pressed robes and your lifetime job.

"The Times story heavily suggests that the problem is that Obamacare didn’t give federal regulators enough power to outright reject rate increases deemed too high"

translation:

The problem is that the law didn´t give the governement the power to force insurers to give away insurance for ´fair´ rates, and force them out of business.

It used to be that the phrase "Democrats will pay for this" meant Republicans will win an election. That is no longer true. A party controlled by Beltway RINOs and contested knee jerk by 47% parasites will remain incapable of taking any political advantage for time to come.

Not only did our representatives in Washington not read the fine print, they didn´t read the big print either. They certainly weren´t looking out for their constituents so who were they looking out for. I don´t know if this has ever happened in the history of America where the congresspeople were so irresponsible as to sign a country changing bill that they had never read. This country is changing - the low info voter voted for this president without knowing anything about him. Maybe they´ll copying Congress - Congress voted this bill in with no information about the contents.

One of the biggest objectives of 0bamacare was to stem the rise of insurance costs??? Maybe in some liberals wildest fantasy. The true objective of 0bamacare is single payer and the end of all private health care in this country. If you believe anything else it´s too late for you.

Obamacare is poorly written Democrat garbage legislation that will fail on it´s own. It is the most stupid Democrat legislation since LBJ´s great society bs.

The real problem is that they needed to force people to buy insurance and can´t. So people only sign up when sick. Healthy people look at the premium and decide there is no incentive to pay premiums until they too are sick. Once sick they consume medical care at twice the cost rung up by previous high risk pools. And government is precluded from making the fines so high they force people to join an insurance pool.

"If you like your current insurance (after we have killed it)then you can keep it."

Progressives know they can never reveal the true costs and effects of their pipe dreams.

Those who cherish liberty above all have no use for incrementalism.

Every so-called "democracy" has the seeds of it´s own destruction sew into it´s fabric at inception. Ours was the stupid concept that every citizen could vote without restriction. Once the poor found out they outnumbered the rich and could vote themselves any and all portions of the treasury, the death of the Republic was a certainty. Øbamacare is the embodiment of that national death sentence.

Obama: ´Health care premiums will go down $2500.´

And where was NYT on this before the elections?

Ignore his words. Listen to his actions. Is he helping or is he destroying?

# 14´s comments are spot on. ObamaCare was passed to start the nationalization of the entire healthcare industry. For example, shrink the profits and then the number of health insurers. Once there are only 5 to 6 enormous providers, HHS will essentially control every aspect of their business. This small number of providers also means a steady flow of large bribes, oops, campaign contributions, to reduce future regulatory burdens.

ObamaCare is designed to fail. For the more that it fails, the more Obama, fhe Democrats and the media can call for still more Obama solutions. Biden will soon be heading up another commission, this one on how to stop soaring healthcare premiums. Commission will be stocked with socialists, and it will surely recommend stringent price controls, federally run clinics, increases in the tax on uninsured, etc.

This was patently obvious from the start, The program would perforce cause skyrocketing premiums people couldn´t afford, businesses to pay the fine instead, eventually putting everyone under the government control as the only way to get coverage. Obama admitted this back in 2007. He said you can´t get to single payer in one shot. Thank you very much low information voter.

The purpose of Ocare was to put private insurance out of business. The laws effects force them to raise premiums which mean more people will drop their private insurance, on and on until the private insurance companies have no choice but to discontinue health insurance all together.

So we all know this was the intent. Obviously Obama´s handlers think this will smoothly transition into a single-payer system, as the uniformed masses beg for socialized medicine once ´capitalist´ medicine has failed. But I think they may have underestimated two things. One, the fact that our government will never be able to actually implement and run even a single payer system and two, the amount of chaos and anger generated as the current system fails.

Obamacare was never the end game. Obamacare was just passed to crash the system.

Single Payer is the next step.

Same dopey post, same lack of reasoning. How about this for a slogan: Waiver Fairness!! Waivers for All or Waivers for None. Waiver Fairness!! No waivers, no peace.

Lest we forget, over and above the cost of premiums to individuals, the damage that Ocare wreaks on the health care industry infrastructure, from hospitals, to doctors and medical device manufacturers, is going to make healthcare harder to find, regardless of price.

#25. I assume that the NRA you reference stands for Not Real Americans. I have written my congresscritter several e-mails and letters stating my total opposition to zerøØcare only to discover he can´t read.

What 27 said. Single payer was the objective all along. There is a old video of obama speaking at some forum where he said, "I´ve always been in favor of a single payer plan." Recall that hillary clinton´s state run health care bill from the 90s included a substantial fine for anyone who attempted to purchase private health insurance. It´s hard to believe that obama doesn´t seek the same goal to eliminate private policies.

Could someone explain what #25 means that the NRA passed 0bamacare?

BTW: Yesterday, I just gave the NRA a nice big contribution.

I think democrats should be sent back to school for basic math lessons.

Wait, this can´t be true. The preezy promised a 3000% decrease in premiums. Surely he was telling the truth.

I cannot afford an increase. Plan D raised this month, medicare raised this month. SS increase barely meeting these increases.
Barely get by from month to month. All I have left is my home of 38 years but looks like I will have to put it on the market. I would like to hold out till housing prices pick up a little but may not be able too.
Much of our savings spent when spouse was sick for years before passing.

Those above who criticize Roberts are correct: With all the careful scrutiny in court cases, consider: jurors who might have heard something about the case & dismissed; judges that have conflict of interest who step down/recuse on that basis; prosecutors who are related to the murdered and recuse themselves; judges that were on drugs during a case, causing guilty verdicts to be thrown out. So then we have the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, where Kagan refused to recuse herself on the ACA issue and Roberts says he made his decision based on what he heard on the news and how it would make the Supreme Court look?! Outrageous!!!

If those DC commies/judges aren´t going to follow laws, the Constitution, protocols, traditional checks and balances then we citizens aren´t going to either! Enough is enough. Get the piano wire ready a la Mussolini. There´s some stringing up to be done!

The information is interesting but the Washington Examiner needs to edit for spelling and grammar. ;-)

Bull crap. This was an intended consequence of the nasty pipsqueak in the White House. Now he can demagogue the insurance comapanies as being rapacious and then get the public goofs to use governement insurance.

What´s one more lie?

Why didn´t the people of coastal Mississippi rush out and buy flood insurance right after Katrina hit? Isn´t that the same as forcing insurance companies to immediately cover pre-existing conditions?

And I have to agree with many other posters. The end objective of Obamacare is to completely end the private operation of health care and make it a completely operated federal government system.

Another question. When the government takes over health care, just where and from whom are people going to get healthcare? By that time, there won´t be anywhere near enough doctors, nurses, hospitals, laboratory´s, etc. Any suggestions?

Do you all still not get it? ObamaCare was designed to fail, to ´prove´ that we ´need´ Single Payer

Don´t you get it? Government NEVER fails. We are stuck with this forever.
We were warned.

Spot on #41. The lack of gov´ts ability to regulate price increases was done by design. They knew insurance rates would skyrocket, requiring a single payer system. It´s working beautifully.

God help us.

You will notice that not even Barry The Babbler calls it the "Affordable Care Act" any longer. That was a pure Joseph Goebbels statement to get the idiot voters to swallow this mess. Barry barely mentions his health care law any more because he is too busy trying to take our guns away. Could there be a connection?

This is Obama: Abort the Constitution. Disarm the resistance. Pour sugar in the gas tank of the economy.
Remember Nikita Krurschev: "We will ´Barry´ you"?

If there ever was a reason for the Second Amendment, it is to stop this tyrant, this totalitarian monsterosity, this vain, creepy, life killing domestic terrorist, his handlers and cohorts. When this traitor comes to justice, in this life or the next, there will be hell to pay.

The question is why should anyone purchase expensive health care insurance until they get sick, as then they can purchase a Cadillac policy without suffering any penalty as the insurance companies must accept them and their preexisting conditions?

Maybe the object of the liberal Democrats from the beginning was to use Obama Care as a stepping stone to a single payer national health insurance government run social program for all the common folks, allowing a very high quality private system to exist for the politicians and the other elite rich and famous who can pay for their own health insurance.

BINGO!! #3. That is exactly right. In fact, not buying into insurance that is available from your employer and then signing up after you are ill is considered insurance fraud. A felony...I suppose that does not matter with OOcare.

Another point, after having worked in the insurance industry for 30 years I can tell you that no company can operate on a 20% above actual claims margin and survive. The typical expense ration is in the 30-35% range. The purpose of this requirement is to drive all the private carriers out of business, period!!

LHT

I still think that Chief Justice Roberts voted the way he did on Obamacare was due to the Dims having pictures of him doing something naughty.

If he didn´t do anything naughty, then the Dims would just Photoshop something, like they did for his "birth certificate."

It´s the Chicago Way...

Let’s stop using the phrases “low information voter” and “single-payer” health care plan. They are both very misleading descriptions.

Way back in 1982, John Naisbet wrote a book entitled “Megatrends” in which he said “We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.” And this was a full decade before the internet became a vast, instant information resource for billions of people.

Today, if you lack information, it’s because you don’t want it. People who decline the opportunity to become informed are ignorant by choice. They believe they already have all the information they need. They don’t want to be educated.

So-called “low information voters” are really drones guided remotely on election day by whichever politician or party is the most skillful at pushing their buttons by “spinning” issues to reinforce a drones’ preexisting mindset.

It’s been said that if a lie is repeated often enough people will believe it. Can the same be said for the truth? If so, why is it that when a politician tells the truth it’s referred by the press to as a gaffe?

As for describing a government funded/government managed national health care monopoly merely as a “single-payer” system: it helps the socialist cause because it doesn’t do enough to warn voters that such systems prohibits individuals from purchasing private insurance so they are stuck with the level of health care service government bureaucrats—not doctors or patients—deem affordable and appropriate. Doctor shortages; long waits for appointments, treatments and surgeries; and death panels, anyone?

Thank you #47. Since you work in the insurance industry perhaps you could give data to support another point. I have heard that the overall profitability of the insurance industry is modest compared to other business. While Obama demonizes them and makes "profit" a dirty word the insurance industry is quite efficient and competative in providing this service. The government may not show a profit in doing the same thing but its officers are paid huge salaries and pensions so the final cost is much higher than in the private sector. We need to keep making the point that profit is cheaper and better than government control and pay scales. Government also cuts benefits in the VA much more than private companies. John Roberts chickened out # 48 because he was threatened with lots of nasty press. He want to have nice things said about him - a fatal flaw which should disqualify anyone for that job!

Speaking of "insurance fraud", isn´t that what tripped up our flotus and forced her to surrender her law license before being tossed in the cross bar Hilton.

Normally you are able to sign up for insurance only once a year in group plans. If you decline coverage one year, get sick, and accept coverage the next year, this is not any kind of fraud. It would be fraud if you gave false information when applying for insurance, but it would typically be handled as a civil matter. I doubt if it there are many cases of criminal fraud being charged simply for making false statements in a health insurance application.

As for the profit margins of health insurers, Yahoo finance shows United Health with a 5% profit margin. This is higher than a grocery store, which might make only a 1% profit margin, but much lower than a tech company like Microsoft which makes a profit margin of 21%.

Actually, the real reason obamacare will fail is very simple. No doctors. Doctors, like the rest of us, do not work for free. Wage levels reflect ones skills and abilities. I see, in time, a government health system when the care givers are second or third string performers. A two tier medical system will develop, pay for service care and the government system. The prospect of seeing a doctor who graduated from the university of "what up?" does not appeal to me.

Obamacare is unsustainable period end of discussion!

Obama could be a very hated Wannabe Commie Dicktater...

by the time the 2014 midterms take place.

We have to oust him before it´s too late.
Cain´t hardly wait.

I´ll be dipped. concern now about the money? What the...

Wow! Mandated extra benefits didn´t cause prices to drop? Who would have known?

The SEIU was the ultiimate purpose of Obamacare. Trash the whole system, the government seizes it and unionizes all the workers. Ergo..a steady supply of dues to keep the rats in power forever.

Obama is transforming us from a nation of relatively free people to a bunch of serfs while smiling in our faces. This is the very worst to ever happen to us.