Health Insurers Say Higher Obamacare Premiums Are Coming, and It's Republicans' Fault
"Health Insurers Say Higher Obamacare Premiums Are Coming, and It’s Republicans’ Fault," Think Progress, May 9, 2018
People who don't have insurance through work stand to lose. Amanda Michelle Gomez.
Early signs show health insurance companies are trying to exponentially raise prices for plans sold on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace — and for people who don’t qualify for federal assistance, there’s no relief in sight.
Insurers in Maryland and Virginia are asking for double-digit premium increases to 2019 monthly plans. CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield CEO Chet Burrell said that Maryland’s exchange is in the “advanced stages of a death spiral.”
Health experts warned this would happen. In fact, insurers who set the premium rates cautioned that costs would rise if lawmakers continued to undermine the Obamacare exchanges and not shore up the market. A letter issued to lawmakers in November from major health industry players said “[e]liminating the individual mandate by itself likely will result in a significant increase in premiums, which would in turn substantially increase the number of uninsured Americans.”
Now the public at large is learning what it meant for Congress to repeal the individual mandate, the tax penalty for not having insurance, and then not doing anything to improve a fragile market.
Instability — largely driven by Republican policy like the repeal of the mandate and the president’s decision to stop paying insurers for cost sharing subsidies — has irked insurance companies, but they’re mostly able to avoid serious harm. In 2017, for example, insurers still made money — Blue Cross Blue Shield had a $1.3 billion windfall — by raising premiums and enjoying the delay of an Obamacare tax, according to Axios.
People who need and buy health care on the exchanges — particularly those who don’t qualify for premium tax credits — are the ones actually hurt by these decisions. To qualify, they need to make between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level. Already, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is asking Maryland to approve a 19 percent increase on HMO plans, which are used by a majority of ACA enrollees statewide, and a whopping 91 percent increase on its PPO plans, which roughly 13,000 people use. The only other option is to purchase Kaiser Permanente plans, which requested a 37 percent increase on its HMO plans. In Virginia consumers have more options...Continued..
https://thinkprogress.org/new-insurance-rates-prove-trumps-policies-have-increased-obamacare-premiums-0793a17d1eb0/
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