The cost of health care is the key issue in our society, not the access to, or affordability of, health insurance. The two are in an evil death spiral, mind you, but the underlying cause is the costs. 

Insurance has caused, over the last few decades, health care to become unaffordable for the common man without access to insurance to defray some of the costs. So by passing a mandate that everyone have health insurance it would follow, that the underlying costs would necessarily go up. 

From Instapundit, via Hot Air:

Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of those policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013. These rate requests are all the more striking after a 39 percent rise sought by Anthem Blue Cross in 2010 helped give impetus to the law, known as the Affordable Care Act, which was passed the same year and will not be fully in effect until 2014.

In other states, like Florida and Ohio, insurers have been able to raise rates by at least 20 percent for some policy holders. The rate increases can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

This is not a surprise to anyone who allies themselves with conservatives. We wanted time to get out the information on the rammifications of this law but Democrats rammed it through despite our protestations. And now we're seeing the proverbial chickens come home to roost. And they are not happy chickens.