The Council for Affordable Health Insurance

"At a time when both Congress and state legislatures are considering health care reform, it's very important to recognize that government usually makes health insurance more expensive, not less expensive," said Dr. Merrill Matthews, CAHI's executive director.

CAHI has regularly tracked all state mandates since 1992, and its actuarial team estimates the impact those mandates have on the cost of a health insurance policy. For the year ending in 2008, CAHI has identified 2,133 state and federal mandates, an increase of 172 over last year's figure of 1,961 state mandates. This year CAHI is also including federal mandates because they affect state coverage.

"Mandates come with a cost," continued Matthews. "While mandate advocates like to claim that mandates lower the cost of coverage, that's not the actuarial experience. They raise costs because utilization goes up. Those costs are then passed on to consumers in the form of higher health insurance premiums -- increases that make coverage unaffordable for millions of Americans."

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Here's Obama's health care mandates that raised insurance costs in Illinois.