Health insurance premiums about to rise for those who pay them

Obamacare is designed to fail.

Insurance companies are telling Obama and the American people they must permit them to raise rates substantially, or they will pull out of the Obamacare markets. This is more proof Obamacare is designed to fail.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Insurance companies are complaining that they cannot generate profits while treating all patients. This is the problem with profit-driven health care, only those who can pay high prices can afford such a system.

Businesses often charge what markets will bear and because health care is related to survival, people will pay premium costs. However, in a free market, without meaningful competition, regulation, or worse, with government collusion, prices will naturally rise to a high equilibrium point that prices out those at the bottom and bankrupts many in the middle.

Compelling the middle class to make installments on their pending bankruptcy is literally the only affect of Obamacare. Many Americans realize there's nothing "affordable" about the Affordable Care Act. We have a habit of naming laws the opposite of what they actually do.

A major part of the problem is that the United States runs health care as a for-profit industry. While the profit motive results in a lot of high quality availability of care, it also results in crippling prices. Even well-to-do people fear developing a chronic illness. A single sick family member can wipe out a family fortune without good insurance to share the costs.

There's also a moral question to consider when illness becomes profitable. What does it say about our ethics when we treat the sick as profit centers?

Other nations provide health care with better outcomes at lower prices because they have generally efficient government systems that eliminate profit as a motive in health care. But these systems also come at a price. Innovation is less common, wait times tend to be much longer, sometimes months for certain procedures.

The United States is unique in that we could develop a single-payer system to operate alongside private insurers to provide affordable care for everyone while preserving the private, for-profit option for those who prefer it. In fact, we already have systems like the Veteran's Administration and Medicare in place. And while these systems are certainly easy to critique, they are also very popular and widely used because they provide affordable care.

There is no reason these systems cannot be overhauled and expanded to improve efficiency and quality.

In the meantime, premiums will spike for the people who pay for their Obamacare plans. While no specific percentage has yet been proposed, insurers are warning the increase will be higher than in the past.

Eventually, the premiums will rise to the point most people cannot afford them, and people will downgrade plans and delay care. Insurance companies will likely quit the markets and the system will collapse. Before that happens, Congress may finally authorize development of a single-payer system, into which all people will be forced.

And that may have been the plan all along.

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