Paging #NCSEN’s Hagan: NC Obamacare premium hikes may be published in August
Another day of more worrisome news for NC’s embattled Senator Kay Hagan:
States are nailing down dates to release 2015 premium costs under ObamaCare, and their decisions will guarantee a drumbeat of news about rate hikes all the way to the November midterm elections.
Democrats are bracing for grim headlines that could put the unpopular law back at the forefront of votersβ minds.
Premiums are expected to go up in a majority of states, as they do every year, but the size of the increases could go a long way toward determining how much political damage ObamaCare inflicts on vulnerable Democratic lawmakers.
A survey by The Hill of state insurance commissioners found that news about ObamaCare premiums will hit nearly every week this summer (see list below), providing ample opportunity for Republicans to attack any significant premium hikes.
A slew of states will publish proposed prices in June, including Colorado and Louisiana β where the GOP is targeting Democratic Senate incumbents.
Others will wait until later in the season, including West Virginia and Arkansas. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010, a fact that his opponent, Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), has repeatedly raised.
Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), a top GOP target, will see her state publish rates on Aug. 15 or later.
I’ll be having fun watching the Senator, who has bragged on her official government website about helping to craft Obamacare – and who recently ‘fully embraced’Β the bill after months of dodging and weaving on it, try to explain away why both she and our celebrity President Β lied (or, er, “misspoke”) about – among other things – Β lowering premium costs while promoting a bill that eventually was shoved down the throats of the American people with not a single Republican vote in the House or Senate, not even the tried and true moderates.
Republicans note that President Obama promised on the campaign trail to enact a healthcare law that would βcut the cost of a typical familyβs premium by up to $2,500 a year.β
And we won’t even go there on the whole “if you like your doctor/plan you can keep it” lie, ya know, the promise that Senator Hagan made in so many words at least 24 times, or how she had the opportunity to vote in favorΒ of a resolutionΒ (but didn’t) that would have prevented people from not being able to keep their doctors/plans, or …