What's Ohio Saying About Rising Healthcare Premiums?

Usually the best time to make any kind of pronouncement — especially about something important like news or healthcare policy — is when you know very little. And the best way to make these announcements is with the caveat “it is expected,” which is English for “we don’t really know, but we’re saying something anyway.”

To whit:

The Ohio Department of Insurance explained its considered thinking about the Affordable Care Act and its effect on the state of Ohio in a press release:

“While those costs do not specifically track with the premiums insurers charge individual customers, it is expected that these increases in costs will also translate to significant premium increases for many Ohioans.”

This brings up a question asked by the folks at Columbia Journalism Review: “If the state isn’t exactly sure what these ‘increases in costs’ mean in terms of dollars and cents in premiums, why did it issue a press release and hold a news call with reporters?”

Well, cynically, it might mean this: “The answer, according to the press release, was to ‘help health insurance consumers continue to prepare for the expected price increases.’ But the Department’s real message seemed to be that insurers have no choice but to simply pass on some unidentified and unspecified costs.”

The question of cost, when it’s brought up by government agencies, is rarely about cost and more often about how to present healthcare reform in (usually) a negative light.