Taxpayers set to take it on the chin AGAIN as lone insurers swoop into “bare” Obamacare counties to charge higher rates

The economic raping of taxpayers via Obamacare is set to enter its next phase as smaller insurance companies move into regions of the country abandoned by the bigger providers.

As misleadingly reported by the Washington Times, every county in the United States save one will have “Obamacare options” in 2018, though obviously the paper’s editors and reporter Tom Howell Jr. have no clue what “choice” actually means.

The paper noted:

Enticed by local monopolies and leverage to charge high rates, a crop of insurers has stepped in and all but erased Obamacare’s “bare county” crisis heading into 2018, allowing state regulators to breathe a little easier ahead of a sign-up season that will still be marked by uncertainty and scarce choices.

As it stands, customers in every U.S. county except one — Paulding County in Ohio — will have at least one insurer on their web-based exchanges set up by the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

It’s a stark turnaround from earlier this year, when nearly seven dozen counties covering over 90,000 people had at some point faced the prospect of having zero options next year, fueling President Trump’s claim the law was “imploding” and needed to be replaced.

Later in the article the paper further noted that insurers who are moving into abandoned counties are requesting high double-digit rate increases, some as high a 57 percent.

What’s more, in virtually all cases, there will only be one insurer moving into those previously abandoned counties — and one insurer does not make a “choice,” unless of course, you’re defining “choice” as between a single company and nothing at all.

Plus, there’s that “leverage to charge high rates” thing going on. While most Obamacare enrollees won’t feel the pinch because their premiums are subsidized, the American taxpayers who are doing the subsidizing will be taken to the cleaners again because insurance companies know that “subsidies rise with premiums for benchmark plans on Obamacare’s exchanges, even if that means taxpayers as a whole end up paying more to blunt higher rates.”

Do you see this perfect storm of corruption, graft and taxpayer abuse that is building — and all because some hypocrite Republicans in Congress refused to make good on their previous pledges to “repeal and replace” the Obamacare disaster?

“Under Obamacare Americans were promised access to a wide variety of high-quality, affordable coverage options. Obamacare has failed to deliver — an unfortunate reality for the American people who are required to buy Washington-approved health insurance or pay a fine,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Matt Lloyd told the Times.

It’s disheartening to see a conservative publication so badly spin this story; there are no additional “choices” for millions of Americans seeking health insurance coverage. Besides that, Obamacare’s anti-free market provisions and requirements are continuing to skew the health insurance industry, leading to dramatically higher prices, higher deductibles, and higher out-of-pocket expenses for the vast majority of Americans.

And all to “insure” about 2 percent of the U.S. population (9 percent still don’t have health insurance, though Obamacare was supposed to cover everyone 100 percent). (Related: Obamacare system in ‘insurance death spiral’ warns Texas Governor; total implosion now inevitable)

The sham of Obamacare lives on and continues to destroy American health care — delivery, coverage, and costs — because the law was set up to do just that so Marxist Democrats could usher in full-on government-controlled health care (also called “single-payer”). It was designed to fail, as one of its principal benefactors, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, once said.

Democrats know this. Republicans know this. So why do even those who say they support repeal and replace continue to punish Americans by refusing to do so?

“That, ironically, may have been the design. By making private insurance unaffordable for everyone, it will become available to no one. All that will be left is government-centered, government-run, single-payer health care,” former U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, M.D., R-Okla., said in 2013.

Every lawmaker — Democrat and Republican — who refuses to repeal this monstrosity should be voted out of office, no questions asked.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

WeeklyStandard.com

MoneyCNN.com

WashingtonTimes.com

NaturalNews.com