[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by classicman

Family can be many - wife +multiple children. It mostly depends on how the tiers are set up. In this instance, it is all very common.

From Here

Thystrup's business isn't the only one where premium increases are being blamed on the new health law. Celinda Lake runs the Democratic polling firm Lake Research. She said her firm's premiums are going up 20 percent.

"My broker told me that it's because of health insurance reform," she says.

But is it really?

Absolutely not, says Jay Angoff, who heads the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "It would be inaccurate and silly to blame it on the new law," he says.

Misinformation

"To the extent that the insurance companies blame the new law for rate increases, they know better," Angoff says. "They've said themselves that the new law would only raise rates by between 1 and 2 percent."

Insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski says there's still another reason premiums are rising so rapidly right now, particularly for individuals: the bad economy.

"What happens in a down economy is that people who are healthy have a tendency to drop their health insurance sooner, maybe [because] someone in the household has lost their job," he says. "But if you're sick, you're going to do everything you can — you'll take a second mortgage on the house if you have to — to pay your health insurance premiums because you think that maybe you're going to use the insurance."

That means the insurance risk pool is full of sicker people, and premiums go up faster. But Laszewski says even if the currently rising premiums can't be blamed directly on the new health law, its backers still have a very big problem: The law doesn't do enough to bring down the rising cost of health care.