If you’re lucky.

Rhode Island Health Insurance Commissioner Christopher F. Koller has approved 2014 health insurance rates that he called “significantly lower” than those requested — but that still involve increases in premiums.

[snip]

For the majority of Rhode Islanders who get health insurance from large employers, rates will go up, on average, 9.5 percent to 12 percent.

Three points about this:

1. Don’t expect that this is the last time that the rates will go up; the whole thing reeks of Let’s raise them as little as possible this time and push the envelope more next time. Because that’s how it works.
2. Remember how prices were supposed to go down under Obamacare? Notice how that somehow became “significantly lower premium increases?” Sorry, but we told so.
3. James Langevin (D, RI-02) voted for Obamacare. Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) voted for Obamacare. Jack Reed (D, RI) voted for Obamacare. The only reason that David Cicilline (D, RI-01) did not vote for Obamacare was because at the time he was off running Providence into the ground*. No Republican voted for Obamacare. The rise in Rhode Island’s insurance rates is not. Our. Fault.

I don’t wish to be cruel to the voters of Rhode Island: but this is what happens when you let your state be exclusively run by, and exclusively represented by, Democrats. I’m sure that looking for an alternative seems all very icky for voters in that state: but whether it is ickier than the 13-17% rate hikes that the insurance companies are pushing for, and will very soon get, is only a rhetorical question for hardcore Democrats who still adamantly refuse to admit that they severely messed up with Obamacare. The rest of us are not actually obligated to cater to progressive’s self-delusion…

Via

Rhode Island approves new Obamacare insurance rates. Pretty much everyone seeing rates go up. http://t.co/CIIYMO5UVz

— Brian Faughnan (@BrianFaughnan) June 30, 2013

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Providence barely managed to avoid bankruptcy in 2012. It’s still not actually reducing its deficit.