In a speech just before the reform law passed, President Obama promised: “My proposal would bring down the cost of health care form families, for businesses, and for the federal government.”

Maybe that’ll happen years down the road when the plan is fully implemented, but so far, reform is having the opposite effect. Hewitt Associates, for example, says premiums for employer-provided insurance will climb 8.8 percent next year, the highest level in five years, and that health reform is partly to blame. A November report from Mercer said that reform “will generally increase” costs. And in early November, the AARP – the senior group that strongly backed the reform bill – announced that its own employees would see insurance costs rise, in part because of health reform.