if you like the plan you have, you can keep it. If you like the doctor
you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you’ll see
are falling costs as our reforms take hold.
President Obama, 5 June 2009
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/weekly-address-president-obama-outlines-goals-health-care-reform
Almost 1 out of every 3 HealthCare.gov plans want rate hikes of more than 10 percent next year.
Insurers have asked for double-digit rate increases for
nearly 1 out of every 3 Obamacare plans that will be sold on
HealthCare.gov for 2016 coverage, according to a new analysis.
And in three states—Delaware, South Dakota and West
Virginia—every plan sold on HealthCare.gov is asking for 10 percent or
more hikes in the prices of their premiums for next year, AgileHealthInsurance.com said in its report.
Source: AgileHealthInsurance.com analysis
Existing Obamacare customers in six other states on
that federally run marketplace, which serves two-thirds of the United
States, could also be in for a rude awakening come November when open
enrollment resumes.
In those other six states, a majority of plans are
requesting double-digit hikes, ranging from Montana, where 86 percent
of the plans have asked for such increases, down to North Dakota, where
67 percent of the plans are doing so.
"The natural reaction [for those customers] is:
They're going to be surprised," said Sam Gibbs, executive director of
AgileHealthInsurance.com.
"In some of these states, there's going to be a strong reaction to it," said Gibbs.
AgileHealthInsurance's analysis found that 7
percent of the Obamacare plans sold on HealthCare.gov are asking for
rate hikes of at least 30 percent, while 14 percent of such plans are
asking for increases of at least 20 percent.
Source: AgileHealthInsurance.com analysis
To be sure, most plans are not asking for double-digit increases.
And because nearly 9 in 10 Obamacare exchange
customers receive federal financial assistance to help pay their monthly
premiums, even if customers re-enroll in a plan with double-digit
percentage price hikes the hit to their own wallet will not seem as
dramatic as if they were paying full price.
[Someone, usually the working middle class, pays the price.]
But the fact that many plans want to raise prices
steeply for 2016 suggests to Gibbs that the Obamacare market is starting
to more accurately reflect the actual cost of covering millions of new
customers.
"You're starting to see kind of a normalization of the plans," he said.
Gibbs said that in 2014, the first year of Obamacare
enrollment, insurers faced pressure "to really keep the rates low
initially," and many had an incentive to do so because they wanted to
gain market share on the new exchanges.
When insurers proposed prices in mid-2014 for the
current year, they had little data on how customers were using their new
benefits, and how much that was costing the plans.
Now, insurers have much more comprehensive data
about health-care utilization by their customers, and also know that
some financial shock absorbers built into the Affordable Care Act
designed to lower their potential losses will be expiring in 2017, Gibbs
said. Those factors are leading some plans to boost rates more
dramatically for 2016 than they had done for 2015.
Other research has borne that out. In June, an analysis
by the price comparison site HealthPocket.com, a sister company to
AgileHealthInsurance, found that in 45 states, insurers were proposing
average rate increases that were 12 percent higher for 2016.
But federal officials who oversee Obamacare have repeatedly
expressed caution about the value of such broad analysis of rates, and
cite projections that most current enrollees are in health plans that
will have rate increases in 2016 of less than 10 percent over this year.
They pointed to the fact that Obamacare customers
can shop for better prices from other plans, and that many more than
half of existing enrollees on HealthCare.gov actively shopped and chose
another plan for 2015.
Officials also cited that the rates on two of the
largest state-run Obamacare marketplaces, California and New York, will
have relatively modest overall price hikes for their plans in 2016. The
states cumulatively accounted for more than 15 percent of total U.S.
Obamacare sign-ups.
California's insurance exchange has said the
statewide average weighted rate increase for 2016 will be 4 percent.
Plans on New York's exchange will rise by an average of more than 7
percent.
And federal officials also note that analyses by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Avalere Health
consultancy have found moderate price hikes for 2016 among a selection
of Obamacare "silver" plans. Those plans are a closely watched category
on Obamacare exchanges.
Silver plans, which cover 70 percent of their
customers' health costs, are the most popular type of Obamacare plan in
terms of enrollment, and are the only type that offers lower-income
customers the ability to get financial assistance with their
out-of-pocket health costs in addition to their monthly premiums.
And the second-lowest priced silver plan in each
Obamacare market is used as a benchmark to calculate how much
subsidy-eligible customers will get for their Obamacare plans.
Those subsidies, which are available to customers
with low or moderate incomes, are often generous. The average subsidy,
or tax credit, for eligible customers was $263 per month this year.
And
80 percent of HealthCare.gov customers had access to a plan that would
cost them less than $100 per month after their subsidy.
Plans that cost
less than $50 per month after factoring in the subsidy were available to
7 in 10 HealthCare.gov customers.
Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the federal
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare,
said the rate-review authority that many state insurance regulators
have, as well as "greater transparency" required of insurers in
justifying their proposed prices, "have helped lower proposed premiums
in a number of states."
"The Affordable Care Act increases competition for
consumers, allowing them to shop around for the best deal," Albright
said. "Last year, more than half of re-enrolling customers on
HealthCare.gov actively shopped and selected a new plan, something that
wasn't possible for many consumers prior to the ACA due to the risk of
being charged a higher premium or denied coverage entirely due to a
pre-existing condition."
"Consumers will find a range of quality, affordable coverage options on the marketplace in 2016."
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/04/obamacares-many-double-digit-price-hikes-for-next-year.html
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