Are you startled by the news that insurance companies are planning health insurance rate hikes of 10 percent or more in 37 states? Well that news, according to the White House, is one of the signs that Obamacare is working.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained to reporters that, thanks to Obamacare requirements, insurance companies are forced to report publicly any proposed rate hikes exceeding 10 percent for the coming period. State insurance regulators, he explained, would then conduct a review of the rate increases.
Because these rate increases are now public, Earnest appeared optimistic that the proposed rate increases would not ultimately stand.
“The result typically has been that after that state review is conducted, that insurance companies would slash their rates,” he explained.
When asked if rate increases were contrary to Obama’s promise to reduce health care costs through Obamacare, Earnest focused more on the law’s ability to slow down spiking health care premiums.
“Our goal of this has been to slow the growth in health care costs, and that has been our mantra,” he said. “And we have seen, as our economists can demonstrate to you, that since the health care law went into effect — since the Affordable Care Act went into effect health care costs in this country have grown at the slowest rate in recorded history, the slowest rate in 50 years.”
The rate hikes won’t be officially set until October.