Team Obama is trying to hide the new ObamaCare premiums until after the election but the cat is wriggling out of the bag.
Even NPR is getting into the act with this timely reminder:
Health Premiums And Costs Set To Rise For Workers Covered At Work
Fall is enrollment season for many people who get insurance through their workplace. Premium increases for 2015 plans are expected to be modest on average, but the shift toward higher out-of-pocket costs overall for consumers will continue as employers try to keep a lid on their costs and incorporate health law changes.
Recent surveys of employers suggest that premiums will rise a modest 4 percent in 2015, on average, slightly higher than last year but lower than typical recent increases.
Bus as Chris Conover notes at Forbes, a 4% increase in health premiums in an era of minimal wage growth is painful:
There’s been a fierce debate over whether Obamacare has increased health insurance premiums. Progressives have argued Obamacare is working due to modest projected premium increases on the Exchanges for 2015. Conservatives have retorted that “there can be no doubt that health care today is more costly than it would have been without Obamacare.” But this argument has focused on the health Exchanges, where only 7-8 million people bought their coverage in 2014. Readers would do well to remember that more than 20 times that number of people rely on employer-provided health benefits (Table C-1). In the employer-based market, the adverse effects of Obamacare on premiums and affordability are strikingly obvious.
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Most discussions of premium trends have failed to address the reality that the purported slowdown in health spending in recent years has occurred at a time that worker earnings also have slowed down relative to earlier periods. For example, the increase in average wages & salaries between calendar year 2012 and calendar year 2013 was only 0.7%. With the exception of the increase from 2008 to 2009 (remember that the recession officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009), this was the lowest rate of increase in all the years since 1999–a period which saw increases of 3.0% or more in 6 different years. In contrast, family health insurance premiums rose 3.8% between 2012 and 2013–a modest increase in absolute terms, but vastly faster than the rise of average wages and salaries.