The Government Does Not Know How To Run The Healthcare Insurance Business

Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the steep rise in ObamaCare premiums.

The article reports:

Last week, IBD reported that BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee wants to jack up its ObamaCare premiums by more than 36%; CareFirst in Maryland by close to 30%; and Moda Health in Oregon by almost 50%.

Since then, North Dakota has reported rate hike requests of 43%, Kansas 38% and Iowa 18%.

Insurance companies (and all other companies–even health insurance companies) stay in business because they are profitable. When they stop making a profit, they go out of business. Insurance companies use something called actuary tables to assess risk, set premiums, and maintain profitability. Unfortunately, the people in the government responsible for ObamaCare do not seem to have any idea what an actuary table is–they can’t understand why the premiums keep rising. Meanwhile, the infirm are signing up for ObamaCare and the healthy people who would balance the load are not signing up.

The article concludes:

First, ObamaCare imposes a pile of costly rules and regulations on the insurance industry — mandating generous coverage, outlawing risk rating, and so on.

Then, to cope with these costs, insurance companies employ large deductibles and co-pays to keep premiums within the realm of reasonable.

Now, the same Democrats who created this problem want to force insurers to lower deductibles and co-pays so health care will be more “affordable.”

Never mind that this would, if enacted, produce yet another round of massive premium hikes.

Someone needs to instruct these Democrats on a fundamental truth of economics: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Someone might also tell the Democrats that the government has never successfully run anything–much less an industry that is a major part of the American economy.