What Do You Mean My Premiums Are Going Up?

As I’ve pointed out before, the Democrats are going to have a hard time selling ObamaCare to the masses. Nothing about ObamaCare makes any sense, and each of the promises they made to entice people was false. Our vaunted media is now figuring this out. As usual, they are fifty days late and two trillion dollars short.

I previously discussed (HERE) how almost immediately after Obama signed the ObamaCare bill, companies began recording losses on their balance sheets, laying off their workers, and cutting their benefits, despite Obama’s assurances this would never happen.

A few days later, the first articles appeared talking about the shock received by ObamaCare supporters when they called private insurance companies and asked how to sign up for their free ObamaCare. According to various insurers, they’ve been fielding thousands of these calls, and none of Obama’s supporters are hearing what they expected. Indeed, rather than being enrolled in their new free care, they are finding out that there is no such thing, and that there won’t be. And they are learning that no matter what David Axelrod may be telling people in interviews, none of the benefits kick in until 2014 or later. People with pre-existing conditions also are finding themselves dismayed to learn that they don’t get covered until 2014, and even then, there are no price controls on what they can be charged.

But then, how could anyone have know this. . . it's not like it was in a bill for the world to see. Interestingly, these articles actually blame the Republicans for this problem because evil Republicans apparently lied. . . spreading lies like ObamaCare providing “universal coverage” and that the benefits kick in immediately. That’s right, the evil Republicans unfairly raised expectations by trying to make the bill sound better than it really is. Yeah, you read that right.

Now the L.A. Times has learned, much to its chagrin, that there are no mechanisms in ObamaCare that allow the government to set the rates that insurers can charge! Sacre bleu! Dianne Feinstein even calls this: “a very big loophole in health reform” and she wants to pass new legislation to give the government such powers. Good luck.

Seriously, how stupid do you have to be not to have noticed that the bill doesn’t allow the government to impose price controls? The bill was right there, ready to be read. And on this issue in particular, Obama himself proposed adding it to the bill, but the Democrats couldn’t do it without having to get the Senate to vote on it again, so they didn't. This was big news. There is no way Feinstein and the Times missed it.

In reality, I don’t think Feinstein is that stupid. She knew full well that there was nothing in the bill that allowed the government to control premiums, she’s just playing along now that the cat is out of the bag. To borrow from Casablanca, she’s “shocked! Shocked! That this isn’t in the bill.”

The L.A. Times, though, is being stupid. They genuinely didn’t have a clue that ObamaCare didn’t give the government this power. They took the word of the Democrats at face value and never assigned anyone to read the bill. Heck, it’s likely they don’t even have anyone on staff would could read the bill. And now they’re weeping into their printers ink that evil health insurance providers could impose massive premium hikes. They’re particularly terrified that such hikes could drive people to oppose ObamaCare. . . . hmmm, maybe they aren’t so stupid after all?