Health Insurers Warn ObamaCare Will Bring Higher Health Premiums

Health insurers are warning that the health care overhaul will bring substantially higher premiums when its major coverage provisions go into effect next year. Via The Washington Post:

The nation's big health insurers say they expect premiums — or the cost for insurance coverage — to rise from 20 to 100 percent for millions of people due to changes that will occur when key provisions of the Affordable Care Act roll out in January 2014.

Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna Inc., one of the nation's largest insurers, calls the price hikes "premium rate shock."

"We've done all the math, we've shared it with all the regulators, we've shared it with all the people in Washington that need to see it, and I think it's a big concern," Bertolini said during the company's annual meeting with investors in December.

Some of that is just shifting costs from the old to the young:

In many states, insurers charge a 60-year-old customer $5 in premiums for every $1 they collect from a 24-year-old. The logic behind that is that older people use health care more and generate more expensive claims than younger customers, so insurers need to collect more to help pay their bills.

But the overhaul will narrow that ratio to 3-to-1. That alone could cause the premium for a 24-year-old who pays $1,200 annually to jump to $1,800, according to [insurance industry trade group] AHIP. Meanwhile, the 60-year-old who currently pays $6,000 will see a 10 percent drop in price.

Is it any surprise that the law continues to struggle to find public support?