Why Obamacare drove up the cost of health care insurance

Karl Rove:

......  now even ObamaCare advocates admit it increases insurance premiums and does not lower them as the president promised. Consider MIT Prof. Jonathan Gruber, a former consultant to the Obama administration. You may recall that the White House rolled him out in November 2009 to undercut a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) analysis a month earlier that estimated premiums in the individual market would increase by 47% over the law's first decade. Mr. Gruber assured Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, "What we know for sure is that [the bill] will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance."

But since ObamaCare passed, several states have hired Mr. Gruber to consult on the creation of the state insurance exchanges that are part of the new law. In this role, Mr. Gruber has now advised at least three states that health-coverage premiums in the individual market would increase 19% to 30%. The culprit is the law's "guaranteed issue" provision that requires insurers to issue policies upon demand, regardless of any pre-existing conditions. This was exactly the provision PWC's analysis warned about before the law was enacted. 

Finally, there is the supply of insurance products and competition. The Galen Institute, a free-market health-care research organization, published a report last December detailing more than a dozen instances in which companies exited the business or ended health-care coverage in as many as 20 states since the passage of ObamaCare. 

At insurance-industry conferences over the last month, executives have told me that the shrinkage of companies and coverage is only increasing as the industry finds it difficult to cope with the regulatory burdens. This will lead to less supply and less competition just when the law contemplates dramatically expanding the number of people with insurance....

How will Obama and Democrats deal with this in the wake of their disastrous showing before the Supreme court?  They may lash out at the court, and insurance companies, but it is doubtful they will take responsibility for the mess they have made.

I suspect then intended to drive insurance companies from the business and drive up cost so they could then push for the single payer plan they wanted but could not get because it was politically not obtainable.