"NC health insurance rates among nation's highest"

[WorseBeforeBetter]

^^Headline from the print edition^^

Headline from online edition:

Blue Cross letters scare some customers, but the outcome isn't always bad

....

When North Carolina officials decided not to set up a state insurance exchange, deferring instead to the federal government, they triggered a 3.5 percent service charge, tacked onto North Carolina’s insurance rates, to run the exchange.

Additionally, North Carolina officials opted not to expand Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor. As a result, about 200,000 people who would have qualified for Medicaid will now qualify for insurance subsidies.

Those people are widely expected to be in poorer health, prompting insurance companies to boost rates by an estimated 2 percent to compensate for the risk of insuring this population, said Mark Hall, a professor of law and public health at Wake Forest University.

The state’s decisions not to embrace the health care law likely dissuaded insurers from entering North Carolina’s market, inhibiting price competition, said Kerry Hall, spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Insurance. Blue Cross is the only insurer that operates in all 100 counties, while Coventry Health Care of the Carolinas is selling subsidized policies in just 39 counties.

....

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/10/19/3292474/blue-cross-letters-scare-some.html#storylink=cpy

How health insurance rates vary by county:

http://media2.newsobserver.com/smedia/2013/10/18/12/01/dKjLh.So.156.pdf#storylink=relast

[Esse Quam Videri]

1. Thanks for posting

I have friends and family in NC bitching about their insurance rates rising and they are blaming Obamacare. I just have to point them to stories such as this so they can see the blame lies clearly with McCrory and the tea-bagging legislature.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

2. Yes, please do.

There's quite a bit of detail in that article, stuff I wasn't aware of. I'd suggest they keep an eye on reliably blue Maryland, which I think is going kick healthcare ass, while NC slips to Deep South levels. Be proud, NC!

[Hissyspit]

3. "INHIBITING PRICE COMPETITION"

Hooray for the free market, you teabagger hypocrites!

[WorseBeforeBetter]

4. Yep! And rural North Carolinians,

many of those "values voters" who put the kibosh on marriage equality, will have the highest rates. Fuck 'em. They won't sweat the details laid out in that article (state v. federal exchanges, no Medicaid expansion, almost no competition, etc.), they'll just blame Obama.

Then there are the desperately needed JOBS the state is losing out on by not expanding Medicaid -- 23,000 is what I've read.