Obamacare paid off for the health insurance industry again at the ballot box as Californians soundly rejected a bid to rein in health insurance rates. Even so, insurance companies still face heat over increasing health insurance premiums, and pressure will build on California’s Obamacare exchange to hold the line on rates. California’s biggest health plans, led by Anthem Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente, spent millions of dollars on ads portraying Proposition 45’s rate regulation as a threat to implementation of the health law. In a lopsided result, 60% of voters joined the industry in opposition. “It’s incredible that an industry that’s so unpopular could do so well in this election,” said Robert Laszewski, a healthcare consultant who has closely tracked California’s implementation of the health law. “Pro-Obamacare forces and anti-regulation folks formed a 60% coalition. It was a strange set of bedfellows,” according to a recent report in the Los Angeles Times.
