ACA opponents have been screaming about health insurance premiums going up because of Obamacare.

I hate to rain on their parade, but premiums have been increasing every year since at least 1999.  Here are figures for the average annual cost of a family policy, courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Year   Premium  % increase
1999 – $5791          —
2000 – $6438        11%
2001 – $7061          9%
2002 – $8003         13%
2003 – $9068         13%
2004 – $9950           9%
2005 – $10880         9%
2006 – $11480         5%
2007 – $12106         5%
2008 – $12680         4%
2009 – $13375         5%
2010 – $13770         2%
2011 – $15073        12%
2012 – $15745          4%
2013 – $16351          4%

Notice the giant 12% hike in 2011, before the ACA required insurers to come begging for rate increases above 10%.  Also remember the insurance companies had to hand out $1.1 billion in premium rebates because they were spending more money on administrative costs than the ACA permitted.

We get our insurance through the Joliet Diocese.  Peg gets it free; insuring me runs about $5000/year.  Every year, the cost has gone up while pharmaceutical coverage gets more restrictive.  We’re also forced to use a mail-order service for maintenance prescriptions; we got stuck paying $150 for a medication even though the manufacturer had a discount program that guaranteed it would cost $15/month.  The service refused to honor the discount program but also wouldn’t let us go to a pharmacy that would.

The only solution to this is a single-payor system, but there will be a lot of howling when it happens.  More on that in my next post.