Thank Obamacare: Buchanan County, Mo., Tops List For Insurance Rate Hikes On Men

Last year, Forbes published a story about how much insurance rates were expected to rise across the country because of Obamacare. Today, Avik Roy and his crew published their follow-up. The study has bad news for just about everybody, but our own Buchanan County appears to have been hit especially hard by the President’s signature legislation. (Emphasis mine.)

Our new county-by-county analysis was led by Yegeniy Feyman, who compiled the county-based data for 27-year-olds, 40-year-olds, and 64-year-olds, segregated by gender. We were able to obtain data for 3,137 of the United States’ 3,144 counties….

Among men, the county with the greatest increase in insurance prices from 2013 to 2014 was Buchanan County, Missouri, about 45 miles north of Kansas City: 271 percent. Among women, the “winner” was Goodhue County, Minnesota, about an hour southwest of Minneapolis: 200 percent. Overall, the counties of Nevada, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Arkansas haven experienced the largest rate hikes under the law.

Amazingly, that 271 percent figure conceals something else about Buchanan that is just jaw-dropping. If you use Forbes’ national rate navigator, you discover that a 27-year-old man in Buchanan County can expect an individual insurance policy rate increase of — get this — 411 percent.

This is “affordable”? How can any politician tell his or her constituents with a straight face that Obamacare is working, or that we need to help the Feds implement this disaster in Missouri? Missouri needs market-based insurance reforms, not Obamacare and its Medicaid expansion. Our people deserve better than this raw deal.