Last year, the Trump rule on short-term health plans went into effect, which not only allowed plans to last 364 days, it lets people renew them for up to 36 months. “Sabotage!” the health care experts cried. They said this new rule would allow junk insurance that would rip consumers off and would force Obamacare premiums through the roof. But the results so far strongly suggest that the “experts” had it exactly wrong when they predicted doom and gloom by giving consumers more choice. States that opened their markets up to new choices and more competition are seeing smaller rate hikes than those that decided to “protect” their consumers by forcing them into government-mandated Obamacare plans.
The number of uninsured climbed by 1.4 million from 2016 to 2018, according to a report out last week from the Congressional Budget Office. Naturally, this led those on the left to blame the Trump administration for its Obamacare “sabotage.” But the data in that report—which was released on the same day the Mueller report came out and largely ignored—tell an entirely different story. All of the increase in the uninsured over the past two years—all of it—is the result of the massive rate increases that Obamacare’s mandates and regulations caused. According to the Health and Human Services Dept., premiums in the individual insurance market doubled from 2013 to 2017. They shot up again in 2018.