Obamacare Enrollees Were Too Old, Too Sick So Premiums Will Rise Again

Democrats were taking a victory lap yesterday on the news that Obamacare has enrolled over 7 million people. Of course, those are just people who have selected plans. A lot of them haven’t paid for the plans, and most of them already had insurance before Obamacare.

Now insurers are saying that because so many of the enrollees were already in the insurance risk pools, and because so many of them were older, Americans are going to get hit with even higher premiums.

Remember when Obamacare was going to save us all $2,500 per year in insurance costs? Yeah, about that:

The Obama administration declared victory on Tuesday over signing up more than 7 million people for this year, overcoming technology failures that stymied enrollment in the program’s early weeks and Republican efforts to discredit it in the eyes of consumers.

But insurers have already said that the first group of new enrollees under Obamacare, as the law is widely known, represent a higher rate of older and costlier members than hoped. To keep their health plans from losing money in the coming years, many expect monthly premium rates to rise by double-digit percentages in some parts of the country.

The only way we were going to avoid premium hikes is if a lot of people who are young, healthy and previously uninsured signed up for Obamacare. But by and large, those people didn’t sign up. Now we’re going to pay for it.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon takes some of the wind out of Democrat sails on the enrollment numbers: “It’s amazing what you can achieve when you make something mandatory, and fine people if they don’t do it — and keep extending the deadline for months.”