CNS News posted a story on Friday about the impact of Obamacare on the cost of health insurance.

Edward Fensholt, senior vice president of Lockton Companies, LLC, an insurance brokerage and consulting firm that provides employee-benefits expertise to 2,500 mostly middle-market employers, told the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions:

“These mandates have increased our clients’ health plan costs 2 to 3 percent on average to this point,” he said. And he said the costs will escalate further when new rules — such as reductions in waiting periods and the automatic enrollment requirement — take effect in 2014.

Note that the new rules take effect long after the coming election.

The article reports:

Bill Streitberger, vice president of human resources for the Red Robin restaurant chain, told the panel that when health care costs increase, his company has less money to invest in opening new restaurants.

For the last three years, he noted, Red Robin’s health care costs per employee have increased more than six percent every year — a much greater pace than the growth of Red Robin’s sales or net income, he said.

There are some basic changes needed in America’s health insurance system–portability, tax breaks for buying health insurance, tort reform, etc. Obamacare never addresses tort reform. Obamacare takes away the free market and places the entire healthcare system under government control. That is a really bad idea, and hopefully the Supreme Court will strike down the entire bill so that the current Congress can try again.