New Dept. of Health and Human Services Report Says Obamacare Will Drive Up Health Care Costs

Those unintended consequences of Obamacare keep on piling on. The latest revelation is the new requirement that kids have to stay on their parents health care plans until they

are 26 will raise premiums nearly 1 percent higher for employer plans according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

This new requirement must be in all plan years beginning on Sept. 23 , one of the first "benefits" of Obamacare to take effect. Many insurers have already started offering extended coverage to families who purchase their coverage directly. Employer HR departments have been flooded with questions about this benefit.

The Health and Human Services Department released estimates of the costs and benefits of the requirement as part of a regulation directing employers and insurers how to carry it out.

The new benefit will cost $3,380 for each dependent, raising premiums by 0.7 percent in 2011 for employer plans, according to the department's mid-range estimate. Some 1.2 million young adults are expected to sign up, more than half of whom would have been uninsured.

...That premium increase will come on top of hikes employers already expect for next year. Large companies forecast that premiums will rise between 6.5 percent and 7 percent without the impact of the health care overhaul, according to an early survey by the National Business Group on Health and benefits consultant Towers Watson.

This isn't some independent Group, this is the department of HHS, part of the administration. Wait a second! Didn't they tell us Obamacare would reduce costs ?

The regulation also specifies that young adults offered extended coverage through an employer cannot be charged more than other dependents, nor can they be offered a lesser set of benefits. Instead, the cost must be spread broadly.

In other words, everyone else is helping to pay for your 25 year old kids.

The situation is different for people buying their family coverage directly from an insurer, as many self-employed parents do. Unlike employers, insurers in the individual market do not have to spread the costs broadly. Parents would face an estimated additional premium of $2,360 in 2011.

This new price increase comes on top of other problems with Obamacare discovered only after the bill was passed:

• Congressmen and their staffs lose their government paid insurance, now instead of 2014.
• The long term cost of the Community Living Services and Support (CLASS) program will be a drain on the budget that wasn't taken into account.
• States are abandoning the High Risk health care pools because of the cost of the unfunded mandates.
• Companies will stop offering heath care coverage as soon as the State Exchanges are set up in 2014.
• The Chief Actuary of Medicare reports that Obamacare will raise medicare costs and reduce the number of doctors that will carry medicare.
• Obamacare will increase the Tax Burden of the Middle Class.

 Today's revelation makes it a lucky seven.  Sadly we are not done. Most of the warnings made about this health care bill that was rammed down the throats of the public have come true.  But watch out, there are more to come.