With the lone Affordable Care Act insurer in Iowa, Medica, proposing a 43.5 percent increase in next year’s premiums, Senator Joni Ernst spoke on the Senate floor yesterday (Wednesday) about the unsustainability of the program in the state. She says over the past two years alone, the program has raised premiums 29 percent last year and 42 percent this year and it is not an affordable option for Iowans. “To anybody that has studied health care reform, this should come as no surprise,” Ernst said. “In the past, many states have tried to reform their individual market. Twenty-seven years ago, Kentucky made an attempt and implemented the Kentucky Health Care Reform act of 1994. Within three years, insurers fled the individual market and the state was hit with skyrocketing premiums.” She added that what happened in Kentucky then is eerily similar to what is happening in Iowa today. Iowa’s Insurance Commissioner, Doug Ommen, agrees with Ernst. “Iowa has hit a point within our market’s collapse that a 43 percent rate increase will drive healthier, younger and middle-aged individuals out of the market,” he said. He then went on to agree with Ernst saying, “Iowa’s individual market remains unsustainable,”
