Affordable Care Act: "Some Americans could see their insurance bills double next year"

Remember when Obamacare was all about “bending the cost curve” and making health insurance cheaper and easier to get? Yeah, about that:

Some Americans could see their insurance bills double next year as the health care overhaul law expands coverage to millions of people.
The nation’s big health insurers say they expect premiums — or the cost for insurance coverage — to rise between 20 and 100 percent for millions of people due to changes that will occur when key provisions of the Affordable Care Act roll out in January.

Mark Bertolini, chief executive of Aetna Inc., one of the nation’s largest insurers, calls the price hikes “premium rate shock.”

“We’ve done all the math, we’ve shared it with all the regulators, we’ve shared it with all the people in Washington that need to see it, and I think it’s a big concern,” Bertolini said during the company’s annual meeting with investors in December.

What’s worse is that individual Americans who purchase their own insurance (read: small-time entrepeneurs and business people) will be hit the hardest:

While the rate hikes will impact roughly 14 million people who buy their own insurance, Denver experts predict the impact will be less on medium and large businesses offering employer-sponsored plans.

This is depressing, but all the more depressing will be the likely reaction from Democrats. They’ll want to address a problem created by a de facto government take over of health insurance with even more government, moving us further toward the single-payer, “universal” government health care system they wanted all along.