Gov. Mike Pence
Sticker shock! says Indiana's Republican insurance department head. Health insurance under Obamacare is going to be ridiculously expensive, according to the
state, as much as 72 percent more than what premiums now cost in the state.
“This new data regrettably confirms the negative impact of the Affordable Care Act on the insurance market in Indiana,” Logan Harrison, chief deputy commissioner for the state insurance department said. “The Affordable Care Act requires many Hoosiers to purchase more comprehensive and more expensive health insurance than they may want or need. These rates call into question just how affordable health insurance will really be for many Hoosiers.”
Except
it's not true.
Based on the very little information Harrison and his office provided in a press release and interviews, what they did in this release was average the cost of premiums of all the levels of plans (bronze—the least expensive—through platinum—the most expensive) and call that the premium cost for everybody: $570 a month. What's more, that $570 a month isn't even the actual premium, but the insurers' estimate for "allowed costs," without taking into consideration copayments and deductibles.
What Harrison also left out, like Ohio's health officials did before him, is the subsidy almost all Indianans participating in the exchanges are going to get from the federal government. It's a profoundly dishonest assessment of what Obamacare will do for the state's residents, but hardly surprising coming from Gov. Mike Pence's government. Pence has been a rabid Obama and Obamacare foe from the beginning, and will do anything—even cook the books and lie to the state's residents—to sabotage the law.