ObamaCare costs will jump next year for exchange customers, one way or the other. Premiums are set to spike by more than 20% in at least 16 states. But, for many, the real sticker shock will be soaring deductibles that mean they’ll get few benefits until they’ve racked up huge bills.
Low-end bronze plans have deductibles hitting $6,850 in 2016. Now insurers are hiking silver-plan deductibles as high as $6,500 as a way to keep a lid on premiums. The downside isn’t just more out-of-pocket costs for patients; it also will have a ripple effect of reducing taxpayer subsidies for cheaper plans.
The state approved a 27.3 percent rate hike for Hawaii Medical Service Association members and 34.4 percent increase for Kaiser members in Obamacare plans for 2016.
HMSA, the state’s largest health insurer, had proposed an average 49.1 percent rate hike — the highest it has ever requested — for 20,935 members in Obamacare plans next year. Kaiser proposed to raise rates 8.7 percent for 13,000 Obamacare plan members in 2016.
The average person with a plan bought in a marketplace set up under the Affordable Care Act has to pay 46 percent of total drug spending, according to research published Monday in the journal Health Affairs. That’s significantly more than for people with coverage through their workplace, who have to pay 20 percent of the costs on average.
For months now, regular readers know I’ve spent countless hours crunching the numbers in an attempt to figure out the national, weighted average rate increases for individual health insurance market premiums. I’ve dug into the numbers for just about every state, filling in hard data where I can and making educated guestimates where I couldn’t.
This paper estimates the change in net (of subsidy) financial burden (“the price of responsibility”) and in welfare that would be experienced by a large nationally representative sample of the “non-poor” uninsured if they were to purchase Silver or Bronze plans on the ACA exchanges.
The health insurance Marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act have attracted nearly ten million enrollees, including many people who were previously insured by an employer-sponsored plan. The most popular Marketplace plan—the silver plan—has significantly higher cost sharing than does a typical employer-sponsored plan, which may cause patients to reduce the use of cost-saving services that are essential for managing chronic conditions.
Chronically ill people enrolled in individual health plans sold on the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges pay on average twice as much out-of-pocket for prescription drugs each year than people covered through their workplace, according to a study published Monday in the Health Affairs journal.
Premiums on ObamaCare plans in 14 major cities are set to increase by an average of 4.4 percent in 2016, according to a new analysis.
The analysis from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation looks at 14 cities where complete data on rates from all insurers on ObamaCare’s marketplaces is available, and will be updated as more states release data.
Like premiums, the Cadillac tax will be entirely borne by workers. Whether it is passed on as a hike in premium or a reduction in wage growth is a secondary matter.
The Employer Benefits Survey, which the KFF has sponsored for many years, continues to be an important and excellent resource. The whole survey is worth reading.
– See more at: http://healthblog.ncpa.org/health-plan-deductibles-grew-seven-times-faster-than-wages/#sthash.Xt2a7Gif.dpuf
It’s time for the Affordable Care Act to join a long list of oxymorons. Why? Because rather like “military intelligence,” “cat proof,” “government organization,” and “simple calculus,” the law better known as Obamacare turns out to be an inherent contradiction. For a sizeable part of the population, anyway.
The ACA is just not affordable to a big chunk of those it was most meant to serve: The previously uninsured. In fact, many are worse off than before, according to a new study. That fact could also unravel part of the program’s foundation, which could be a problem for healthcare insurers.