The average employer-provided family health insurance premiums have climbed $2,976 since 2009, according to an annual Kaiser Family Foundation survey released this week. They're up $3,671 compared with the year before President Obama took office. That's despite Obama's repeated promises that the health care reform law he championed would cut premiums by $2,500 in his first term.
And while annual premium increases have moderated over the past two years, that's due to trends in the insurance market largely unrelated to ObamaCare, and trends the law could actually reverse.
The Kaiser survey found that the average family premium this year is $16,351, up 4% over last year, and up 22% since 2009. After adjusting for inflation, premiums climbed an average 3.2% a year in Obama's first term, higher than the 2.7% average during President Bush's last four years in office.
During his first campaign for president, Obama repeatedly claimed that his health reform plan would, as he said at a Virginia rally in 2008 "lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year."
Nevertheless, the White House has been touting recent signs of health cost moderation as evidence that ObamaCare is "already working to reduce costs."
Officials cite the fact that national spending on health care climbed just 3.9% in 2011, the same as the previous two years, and the slowest increase since the 1960s.
But the trends driving the slowdown in health spending have little to do with the Affordable Care Act.
No comments:
Post a Comment