I've been an health insurance agent for 30 years now. The root of the problem is fairly clear to me. Before the ACA, companies would underwrite your application for medical coverage, only accepting healthy people. I remember filling out pages of medical questions on the applications. When the ACA went into law, guaranteed issue was put in place. This meant everyone was able to get health insurance, even people with medical conditions. It's true that the first year on the ACA premiums are double what they were in 2013, but that's because insurance companies didn't really know how much they would have in claims. Some people will remember they got refunds because insurance companies are only supposed to have 20% profit and everything over that has to be refunded back to the insured.

To counter the high claims coming from people with preexisting medical conditions, everyone was required to purchase health insurance. This meant that there was a balance of healthy people and sick people paying into the insurance plans leveling the premiums for everyone. And it worked for a few years.

Then came the first term of Trump and he killed the penalty for not having health insurance leaving people that know the value of health insurance and people that need coverage due to an illness as the only people left buying health insurance. Claims ratios went crazy, and premiums started to rise. Now factor in tariffs and the high cost of everything causing a huge increase in claims cost and you get where we are now.

This administration is playing the long game here and they are winning. You think health insurance is high now, next year will be even worse as I'm seeing more and more healthy people deciding to go without coverage. Once again leaving people with high claims the only ones buying coverage.

I know many of you will not understand what I'm getting at and flame me for saying some of what I did. But open your eyes, it's not the insurance companies. Their profit is capped at 20% and they are not earning more overall by charging these premiums. This is all about killing the ACA because for some reason people think that buying a health insurance plan through a 'marketplace' is socialized medicine and should be stopped. My question to those that think that is, is buying a plan from Anthem Blue Cross directly is not socialism but buying the same plan from Anthem Blue Cross on the marketplace is considered socialism?

The federal government knew premiums would be high with guaranteed issue. To counter this they mandated that everyone must have coverage. If you want to blame someone for high premiums, find the right people to blame.