Premiums For Health Care Soaring

Brokers of health insurance for small companies tell me they have never seen the kinds of premium increases that they are forced to pass on this year. Rate hikes range from 10% to 25% for small business owners. Obviously, the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka PPACA and ObamaCare, goes into effect in pieces over the next four years and hasn’t had much of an impact yet on private sector prices. But the requirement to add dependents through age 26 and the removal of maximum caps on coverage are playing into the prices going forward. Brokers tell me those changes are adding a couple of percentage points to the premiums for policies running forward for a year. But the basic point here is that hyper-inflation of health costs continues unabated. The national bill hardly laid a glove on that budget-busting set of dynamics. Hence, business will have to get innovative and rely on their own devices to put a clamp on the run-away costs.