Barack Obama essentially promised that the Affordable Care Act would provide more effective, lower cost health care to millions of Americans. As Maury Povich is so fond of saying, “that turned out to be a lie.”
Forty-nine of 50 states will see premium hikes on the individual market in 2016, according to a tracker released by Freedom Partners, a Virginia-based non-profit.
Every state with the exception of Mississippi will see their health insurance premiums rise in 2016, and most states will see double-digit increases.
More than one in three states, or 17 percent, will see average premium increases of 20 percent or more including Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
The five states facing the largest premium increases are Minnesota with 47.7 percent, Alaska with 39.1 percent, Tennessee with 35.2 percent, Hawaii with 30 percent, and Oklahoma with 29.4 percent.
Those are not moderate premium hikes. They represent a massive new cost of living increase for anyone happens to live in any of those states. They’re also a reminder of what happens when you distort markets to fit your ideologically bankrupt worldview.