The following comes from an Aug. 19 story on California Watchdog.

For some time, Obamacare critics have warned that health insurance premiums would skyrocket once the Affordable Care Act went into effect.

Now they say the leap in premiums, as calculated by state Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, is just the beginning of hefty annual hikes in the years ahead.

Jones recently released an analysis – conducted in response to complaints regarding steep increases in health insurance rates – that compared 2013 and 2014 health insurance plan rates. The analysis found the average rate increases for people who had insurance in 2013 and bought 2014 coverage were between 22 and 88 percent.

Those with incomes that were low enough received premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. But many Californians whose incomes were not low enough received a major rate increase, Jones said….

Stephen Parente, a professor of health finance and the associate dean of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, said these sharp premium hikes are just the beginning for Californians who don’t qualify for the Affordable Care Act.

Parente released a study in May finding that structural problems in the ACA would lead to significant premium increases in the years ahead, prompting droves of Californians to cancel their health insurance policies. As a result, Parente calculated the ranks of the uninsured in California would swell to 11 percent within a decade.

“The increases will be above 3-4 percent a year and will probably average 6-8 percent on average over the next 20 years,” Parente said. “There will be a spike, unless the Obama administration changes its policies, in 2017. That spike could increase the number of the uninsured by 2-3 million people over the long term and that would mean that 5-6 years later up to 5 million would be uninsured than otherwise would have been insured.

“So the short of it is that premium increases are going to drive increases in the number of the uninsured, so that by the time you get to 2023, we could have essentially 40 million uninsured nationwide. In fact, because of the premium increases, from 2015 on, we’ll have an increase in the number of uninsured that continues to grow for the next 10 years and beyond….”

To read the original story, click here.