Heavens to Betsy, young Americans who still think Barack Obama wants to give them hope and change need to check out Avik Roy's enlightening (and alarming) article in Forbes. Here's a bit of it. Last March, I wrote a detailed piece on why Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of insurance for young people. Yesterday, Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal reported that some colleges are dropping their student health plans for the new academic year, because the new law increases the cost of those plans by as much as 1,112 percent. And no, that’s not a typo.
Most college students are in the peak of health. Hence, covering their health care is usually a pretty easy thing to do. A number of colleges—particularly small, private liberal-arts institutions—offer their students what are called “limited-benefit” plans, which cover health expenses up to a defined cap, such as $10,000. Because expenses are capped, these plans are extremely inexpensive, with premiums ranging from $150-500 per year.
However, Obamacare prohibits capping insurance payouts, causing premiums to skyrocket. For 2013-2014, the law prohibits caps below $500,000 per year; after 2014, caps are banned entirely...
At the State University of New York in Plattsburgh, she writes, the 2011-2012 school-year premium was $440 per student. Next year’s plan will cost between $1,300 and $1,600.
Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C. paid $245 per student per year for 2011-2012. Next year, they’ll have to pay $2,507 to meet the law’s requirements. The University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. paid even less last year—$165 a year—but will have to pay between $1,500 and $2,000 next year: more than twelve times their current insurance costs.
What’s the Obama administration’s response to this carnage? Effectively it’s this: that people should pay more for insurance, because it’s for their own good. ..
