Despite years of Obama’s promises that America’s health care costs would go down if Obamacare was passed into law, new statistics show that care and insurance premiums have risen more this year than in the last 32 years.
A report by Kaiser/HRET Employer Health Benefits released on September 14 found that the average American family’s health care plan costs over $18,000 a year. That is up 3.5 percent over 2015, a hike exceeding the growth in wages.
While it is bad on individuals, in the chronically poor Obama economy, it is worse on employers.
“Employees are paying a whole lot more for health insurance than they did a decade ago. The average family plan cost $11,480 in 2006, of which workers had to pay $2,973,” CNN Money reported.
Deductibles are also rising quickly, forcing workers to pay more out of pocket when using their insurance.
Over half of workers pay a $1,000 deductible or more, a jump of 31 percent sine 2011. According to a recent piece in The New York Times, employees of small businesses have even higher deductibles at $1,800 a year average. Worse, one in five workers pay $2,000 or more.
And costs have been soaring. According to Freedom Partners the hikes have been punishing.
“The largest percentage increases in deductibles were in Mississippi (39 percent), Washington (31 percent), South Carolina (26 percent), Louisiana (24 percent), Florida (23 percent), Minnesota and Vermont (22 percent), Arizona (21 percent), and North Carolina (20 percent),” the Heritage Foundation reported.
All of this is a far cry from the hoary claims Barack Obama made when he was selling Obamacare to the nation. Not only did Obama claim we could keep our doctors and health care plans “if we liked them,” but Obama also claimed that the average American would save $2,500 per family for their health care. But by last year costs had soared to $4,865.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.