Forget Jonathan Gruber's promises that Obamacare would "for sure" lower health insurance costs

Remember Jonathan Gruber's crucial analysis that played such a central role in getting Obamacare passed?  Remember his promise that passage would greatly reduce health insurance costs?  He promised" "we know for sure the bill will do is that it will lower the cost of buying non-group health insurance."  Remember that this is the same guy who got paid about $400,000 from the Obama administration and failed to mention it in all the media that he did pushing Obamacare?  Well, as best as I can tell from Gruber's statements is that for some states that already have a lot of mandates, the cost of health insurance will pretty much stay the same, but in other states the cost will go up, often by a lot.  Of course, none of this includes the impact from the ban on pre-existing conditions exclusion.


Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute has the story here:

As states began the process of considering whether or not to set up the insurance exchanges mandated by the new health law, several retained Gruber as a consultant. In at least three cases—Wisconsin in August 2011, Minnesotain November 2011, and Colorado in January 2012—Gruber reported that premiums in the individual market would increase, not decrease, as a result of Obamacare.
In Wisconsin, Gruber reported that people purchasing insurance for themselves on the individual market would see, on average, premium increases of 30 percent by 2016, relative to what would have happened in the absence of Obamacare. In Minnesota, the law would increase premiums by 29 percent over the same period. Colorado was the least worst off, with premiums under the law rising by only 19 percent. . . .
"It is important to recognize some limitations in our modeling of prices. In particular, given publicly available data we cannot incorporate the effects of the ban on pre-existing conditions exclusions. . . . ."

Roy's piece is worth reading.