Walker gives Health Care Costs a shove Upward, blames ObamaCare.

Republicans may whine about health care costs skyrocketing under ObamaCare, but it's all just a show. Thanks to Scott Walker and his band of plundering pirates, ObamaCare will cost more and wither away just like they said it would.

The irony? Walker's anti-ObamaCare supporters are now buying junk policies. And you know what, some of them deserve it.

Citizen Action of Wisconsin:

Walker Administration Deliberately Rigging Health Insurance System to Raise Rates: Almost as many people enrolled in substandard “lemon” health plans in Wisconsin as buy individual coverage through Healthcare.gov.

We know this because of an inadvertent admission by Deputy Insurance Commissioner J.P. Wieske during a recent hearing, that...:  

"...a much larger number of Wisconsinites than previously believed are enrolled in substandard health plans which do not meet the standards of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)."

Those stubborn and not so "fiscally conservative" Walker backers decided to "keep the plan they already had." 

In the hearing Wieske testified that 203,000 Wisconsinites are covered by so-called “transitional plans,” often referred to as “grandmothered” plans. Currently 239,034 Wisconsin health consumers are enrolled in individual coverage on Healthcare.gov. This means the ACA marketplaces in Wisconsin would be much larger if these transitional plans were prohibited.

People on these grandmothered plans...

...tend to be healthier, because the insurance corporations were still permitted at the time to discriminate against people with health conditions. Wisconsin exercised the option to continue these plans, while Minnesota and many other states working to improve health care access banned them.

Why keep the old plans? To slowly destroy ObamaCare by keeping half the people off the exchanges:

1. Substandard “lemon” plans increase prices in the ACA marketplace by skimming healthier people.This deprives healthier individuals from the ACA marketplace, leaving the remaining population sicker and costlier, and raising rates.

2. Even when they are cheaper, substandard “lemon” plans can be dangerous for health consumers when they face a major injury or illness. These plans often have gaps in coverage or extremely high cost sharing ... raising premiums by as much as 10 percent and decreasing enrollment” (Rand Corporation). “Integrating these underwritten members into the ACA pool is expected to improve the health status of the market as a whole, which could lower the relative cost of coverage on average.” (Milliman Actuaries)

So there you have it. And we keep electing people who hate government so much they'll do anything to make it worse:

“It is hard to escape the conclusion that the Walker Administration is deliberately trying to destabilize the Affordable Care Act by allowing insurance companies to skim healthier consumers,” said Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “The impact of this policy is to rig the health care system against Wisconsin families ... The only party who benefits from the continuation of lemon health plans is the insurance industry, which is allowed to continue to profit by separating the healthy from people with health conditions.