Health Insurers Are Spending Millions to Defeat California’s Proposition 45

From the start, even fans recognized that one of Obamacare’s great weaknesses was its failure to regulate insurance rates. Washington orders you to buy insurance, but can’t police how insurance companies raise your rates, a decision that made the Affordable Care Act a big moneymaker for the insurance industry.

Now, determined to preserve and increase profits, the industry is waging a fierce and expensive battle against a ballot initiative in California that would regulate insurance premiums. The vote in November has national significance. California, according to the Insurance Journal, is the largest insurance market in the country and what happens there politically and economically can be felt elsewhere in the country. Certainly, the fate of the measure, Proposition 45, is likely to have a great impact on consumer advocates’ efforts to improve Obamacare.