More Hidden Costs from Obamacare

The front page of The Charleston Gazette for today details yet another of the invoices that will be coming due as taxpayers continue to be fleeced by Obamacare.  This time, the consequences of the President's fiscal disaster are reaching deep into the pockets of West Virginia taxpayers who will have to pay the additional costs for mandated expansions of coverage to every West Virginia public employee and their dependents covered by the State's health care plan.

Ted Cheatham, the Director of the West Virginia Public Employee's Insurance Agency ("PEIA") broke the bad news to PEIA's Finance Board yesterday.  Because of the coverage mandates under Obamacare, PEIA's expenses will increase by $30.1 million in fiscal year 2012 (which runs from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012).  By fiscal year 2015, the estimated cost increases will reach $38 million.  (Sorry, I wasn't able to find a full copy of the report online, but if I do, I will post it.)

So what are these coverage mandates?  Under Obamacare, coverage for mental health issues must be the same as coverage for all other medical conditions (previously, PEIA placed coverage caps and other cost controls on mental health coverage).  In addition, Obamacare requires all insurance plans to cover the children of the insured to age 26 (ahh, the cycle of dependency).  Just the expanded coverage for children alone will cost PEIA $8.6 million per year by fiscal year 2015.

The subsidy provided by West Virginia taxpayers to public employees for the cost of health insurance runs to more than 70% of the total cost of the insurance, so the taxpayers will be hit by these increased costs in a big way.  But the increased costs will hit public employees hard too, as premiums, copays and deductibles are raised to cover the increased costs caused by Obamacare.  The current PEIA Board has taken a lot of hard positions lately and tried its best to hold the line on costs, as the article details.  But no amount of cost-cutting will save West Virginia's public employees, who are not particularly well-paid to begin with, from increased costs:

Projections are that PEIA will finish the current budget year on June 30 with an annual surplus of about $40 million.

Cheatham said he had initially hoped those funds could be used to avoid having to impose any premium increases next year.

"The problem is, it's all going to be offset by the federal health reform," he said.

I wonder what the West Virginia Education Association, which strongly supported Obamacare through its parent the National Education Association, do when Obamacare causes the WVEA's members to go home on payday with less scratch in their pockets?  And how many other states will have to deal with the same issues as PEIA?