No competition
Regarding the Oct. 5 letters from those who have received notice of a usurious rate increase for monthly health insurance: While I empathize with my fellow taxpayers in this situation, their plight is a result of free market principles in action. When a business has no competitors, it charges anything it wants. Free market at its best!
BCBS has no competition because Republican state leaders decided not to expand Medicaid and not create any state health care exchanges. Thus the poor who would have qualified for Medicaid fall under the ACA income limits and the rest of us are at the whim of BCBS rate setters because there is no competition.
The federal government does not set the monthly premium rates. The private health care insurance companies set the rates.
Lou Giglio
Raleigh
