You know those mandates that force insurance companies to cover children of adults until they are 26 years old? And the ones that forbid rejecting children who have pre-existing conditions? Yeah that costs insurance companies money. Can you believe that? Health care costs money! It costs more money to cover people for mandated coverages! Who could have foreseen that? Not Obama and his merry band of tenured Ivy League hermits, who have never held private sector jobs in their entire lives.

Story from The Hill. (H/T Health Care BS via ECM)

Excerpt:

Health plans in at least four states have announced they’re dropping children’s coverage just days ahead of new rules created by the healthcare reform law, according to the liberal grassroots group Health Care for America Now (HCAN).

The new healthcare law forbids insurers from turning down children with pre-existing conditions starting Thursday, one of several reforms Democrats are eager to highlight this week as they try to build support for the law ahead of the mid-term elections. But news of insurers dropping their plans as a result of the new law has thrown a damper on that strategy and prompted fierce push-back from the administration’s allies at HCAN.

The announcement could lead to higher costs for some parents who are buying separate coverage for themselves and their children at lower cost than the family coverage that’s available to them.

[…]Health plans and state insurance commissioners in July raised concerns that the new rules could lead some insurers to stop children-only coverage because families could wait until their children get sick to buy coverage.

[…]…insurers including WellPoint and CoventryOne have announced in recent days that they’re dropping children’s coverage in California, Colorado, Ohio and Missouri, according to HCAN.

Yeah, insurance companies don’t like being forced to add coverages, (= risk of having to pay claims), while keeping premiums the same. It increases their losses. And if they can’t raise premiums to cover the increased exposure to claims on these additional coverages, then they go out of business. And then you get to pay for your own health care costs out-of-pocket.

The only person who did not see this coming is Barack Obama. He understands less about economics than my keyboard.

Here is my previous post about Connecticut raising their health premiums 20% or more to respond to Obamacare.

From the Hartford Courant. (H/T Hot Air)

Excerpt:

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Connecticut requested a wide range of premium increases, which will take effect Oct. 1, to cover the costs of new benefits required by federal health reform. Higher prices mostly affect new members shopping for a health plan on the individual market rather than people who have group plans through an employer or some other organization.

The Connecticut Department of Insurance approved Anthem’s request without changes, including a boost of as much as 22.9 percent just to comply with one provision: eliminating annual spending limits per customer. But it’s unclear how much more customers will pay because of the variety of plans and the complexity of other factors, such as a person’s age.

New provisions mandated by federal law to start Thursday include allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plan until they turn 26, eliminating annual and lifetime limits on the amount of money an insurer spends per customer and mandating that insurers cover the full cost of preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies.

The looming question is how much those new mandated benefits, along with rising medical costs, will raise prices for health insurance next year. Insurers will submit a new batch of rate requests in October and November to take effect in 2011.

Hans Bader reminds us of what else has happened:

Employers like AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere, and Verizon have already reported major cost increases due to the new health care law.

As noted earlier, the health care law raises taxes on the middle-class and investors in future years. Obamacare will cause many harms, such as reducing life-saving medical innovation and increasing state budget deficits. It is based on accounting gimmicks that will increase the federal deficit, as even some Obama supporters have admitted — like David Brooks, who in a moment of candor called arguments for the bill ““unbelievable” and “insane.””

This is what talking about “hope” and “change” amounted to.