The “Obamacare Raised Insurance Premiums by Double Digits” Lie

Here. This is the news item that is causing the rightwingers to go nuts all over the country. The headline is, Obama Administration Confirms Double Digit Premium Hikes. Those hikes are in premiums for health insurance, if you were wondering. The rightwingers are running with this, saying, “Look! Obamacare made insurance rates double in the US!” Problem like almost everything rightwingers say, that’s a lie. Obamacare didn’t do any of that. Can’t these rightwingers understand that somehow? Obamacare is nothing but Insurance Reform. That’s all it is. The whole health care sector of the economy is in the private sector. The US has private medicine. Yes, the government pays for some medical care, but only Medicare and Medicaid, and that’s it. Everybody else has to go buy private insurance on the private market. Obamacare is not “a government takeover of health care” because it leaves the whole market in private hands. We have a private, capitalist medical care system.

Now the insurance companies sat down and wrote that Obamacare law with Obama. I really don’t know who is yelling about this law because it sure isn’t the insurance companies. Obamacare meant that the insurance companies got millions of new customers. That’s right, millions. Like maybe 20 million. So it’s a windfall for the insurance companies. Now, no cost controls were put on Obamacare because 100% of the Republicans and rightwing Democrats were opposed to them. So Obama caved on cost controls, and none were put in. The rates are going up in part because the government has not yet imposed price controls on this capitalist industry.

The companies that raised those rates are all capitalist companies! They are private, capitalist companies who decided to raise their rates outrageously for no apparent reason except that they are capitalists out to ream the customer. The government didn’t raise those rates. Obamacare did not raise those raise those rates either because Obamacare says not one single word about rates. So if you have a problem with the rates going up so much, take it up with the capitalist insurance companies who raised those rates in the first place. Why are rightwingers attacking the government for capitalist companies that decided to raise their rates. How is that the government’s fault?