That's the only conclusion I can draw from this report that tells us our choice next year will be between catastrophic ObamaCare-induced health premium hikes even over this year's levels, or the end of the private health insurance market altogether:
Health insurance companies are amplifying their warnings about the financial sustainability of the ObamaCare [cartel]s as they seek approval for premium increases next year.
Insurers say they are losing money on their ObamaCare plans at a rapid rate, and some have begun to talk about dropping out of the [cartel]s altogether.
“Something has to give,” said Larry Levitt, an expert on the health law at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.” [emphasis added]
That's a rather....ominous turn of phrase, isn't it? "Something has to give". But the higher premiums (and deductibles, which, again, used to be inversely related, pre-ObamaCare) go, the fewer Americans that will be able to afford them, and the more Americans that will drop their coverage and just pay the vastly cheaper "tax" instead, and the greater the percentage of those with coverage will be the old and sick who regularly and exorbitantly use it, and the higher insurance carriers' costs will get, and the still higher premiums will spiral, and so on. Which is why Mr. Levitt is wrong in the choice he describes above; it isn't a question of gouging premiums even more or insurers dropping out of the cartels; forced premium gouging is leading inexorably to insurers dropping out of the cartels. It is inevitable. And it's looking increasingly like next year, the first year of the Hillary Clinton presidency with a restored Donk SuperCongress, thanks to Trumpmania, will be the one in which the "Final HealthCare Crisis" (i.e. the designed collapse of ObamaCare) will land.
Which Mr. Levitt assures us it won't:
“What we’re likely to see is more of a [cartel] correction than any kind of death spiral,” Levitt said. “There are enough people enrolled at this point that the market is sustainable. The premiums were just too low.” [emphasis added]
Fascinating, no? One of the core justifications for the Unaffordable Care Act in the first place was that health insurance premiums were too high, and that's why we needed the federal government to swoop in and "fix" it. Now they tell us that no, actually, the problem is that health insurance premiums aren't high enough. And they've definitely "fixed" that, alright.
But just think, folks - next year, it'll all be "free".
Just like at the....Veterans Administration.
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