It's easy to get a spectacular rate increase. Pick someone young currently on a catastrophic-only plan with no well-care benefits, and caps on annual payouts. (those eHealthInsurance.com plans. Oh, and there's underwriting. Better be in perfect health...) Now compare the annual premiums for that against the cost for a 'catastrophic' PPACA plan which includes:
The non-PPACA plans have a bit less coverage. For example, the Mega-Life plan that was pushed at DD's college, before the PPACA laws, offered:
You get the idea. One hour in the ER, or one day in the hospital, and you are looking at a huge out of pocket expense. The Mega-life plans were called on the carpet by the state insurance commissioner because they only spent about 10% of the (admittedly low) premiums on medical care. They just didn't cover very much. That also kept the rates low.
For DD, we got a 'huge' rate increase for her individual insurance, one of those really scary percentages this editorial talks about. It's about $60 a month. Considering that unsubsidized individual insurance for the three of us is over $1000 a month, and the rates for DW and I dropped slightly, it's a wash for our budget.
For self-righteous indignation junkies jonesing for a fix, though, filtering out these big percentage numbers has to be a real mainline spike, because... "A 60% rate hike? Why, that's almost double! How can these people look at themselves in the mirror after doubling or tripling the cost of insurance for the poor working man?"