Americans buying health insurance outside the new health insurance exchanges are paying premiums up to 56 percent higher than before the health law took effect. Insurers have jumped the cost to cover all the new, added features of Obamacare.
According to a cost report from eHealthInsurance, a nationwide private insurance exchange, families are paying an average of $663 a month and singles $274 a month, which is much more than before Obamacare went into effect. Most buyers are choosing the lowest level of coverage, called Bronze plans, which have higher deductibles and higher out-of-pocket costs, because they are the cheapest plans available under the new mandated benefits plans, which must contain “minimum essential health benefits” determined by the government.
While exchange coverage’s may be subsidy or cost-sharing eligible, which lowers the cost of health insurance premiums or out-of-pocket costs, many Coloradoans aren’t eligible for either, since they fall outside the 400% of federal poverty level maximum income level for eligibility. Even those who qualify, but at the higher levels of income, will see little if any subsidy.
From The Washington Times: “The shocking surge in prices show what Americans not in Obamacare or covered by their employer are paying as they seek lower premiums. Typically, they are not eligible for the subsidies Obamacare offers those with low incomes.” Go here for more.
And while Colorado is probably one of the states that is enjoying lower percentage increases on exchange than others, according to some published reports, the reality is that we in this practice have seen no “reasonable” increase for anyone (and that is certainly not anecdotal!). Most clients have seen substantial increases, if they are keeping plans, and are seeing increases even in plans that have higher deductibles and higher out-of-pocket expenses. Frustrating, to say the least.
The reality is that published analysis, such as this, reported in The Denver Post, is misleading: exchange based coverage simply doesn’t compare to policies issued in the pre-Obamacare days. Without getting into the fraudulent “inferior policies” gambit, the simple truth is that insurers, including all who operate in Colorado, drastically scaled back provider and facility networks, and re-filed plans as HMOs, which require substantial gatekeeper provisions to reduce specialist access, in order to keep premium costs from mushrooming in the face of all of the new (and some would say unnecessary, and possibly unwanted) “minimum essential health benefits” that the new ACA-compliant plans require. In addition, some states were forced to move to many new federal design and benefit changes, especially in the regulatory and compliance areas, such as community rating, which Colorado has had, and in it’s most restrictive form, for several years. Since Colorado already had adopted many of the policy changes and benefits requirments embedded in the federal legislation in years past, the impact of the new changes had less of an impact on Colorado premiums than in other states.
Make no mistake, though: your premiums did not go “down $2,500 a year” under Obamacare. They really did go up.