Yep, Qualified Health Plans in the individual market are seeing roughly a 25% price hike year over year. For people who are buying on Exchange, the vast majority of that price hike will be hidden if they are being subsidized and if they are willing to switch plans. For people who are buying off-Exchange or don’t qualify for subsidies, they are screwed.
But let’s get some context here.
#ACASignups Without downplaying the very real rate hike problem these people face, here’s some important context. #ACA #Obamacare #OE4 pic.twitter.com/C4YlTAZDTp
— Charles GHOULba ? (@charles_gaba) October 26, 2016
Most people get their insurance through either a government program (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, VA, IHS etc) or through work. Employer based coverage looks like it is increasing by 5% to 6% this year.
The rest of the market is fairly stable and predictable with few major policy shocks to it. The QHP market is still not stable and still not predictable as the ramifications of major policy shocks are still reverberating.
Is it a problem. Hell yes. Is it a widespread problem. Hell no.
craigie
Last year, I was paying an unsubsidized rate of $1500/month to cover a family of four, as a self-employed person. That was painful. If I had to add 25% on top, that would be even more painful. Although I liked being on my own, having a job this year that provides insurance has been a big win, financially.
satby
And no one ever (other than you Richard) points out that a lot of the policy shocks were engineered by Republican opposition to try to make the whole program fail.
opiejeanne
@satby: I saw something on Twitter about how Rubio has been the cause of a lot of the rise in premiums, through some sneaky legislation. I didn’t read it because it’s 3:30am and I really need to go to sleep now.
Patricia Kayden
Sadly for Repubs, Trump is so inarticulate that he probably couldn’t explain the ACA price hikes if he tried. Thus, he can’t exploit it for his Presidential run.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@opiejeanne: Probably talking about Rubio pushing for killing the risk corridors. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel has been making the rounds talking about that.
Richard Mayhew
@opiejeanne: yes the Rubio-con of limiting risk corridor payout killed quite a few co-ops without saving actual money.
Here is my piece from December 2015
https://balloon-juice.com/2015/12/01/risk-corridors-asset-valuation-and-favoring-incumbents/
Adamchaz
More people are being denied health insurance through their states refusal to be expand medicare then are having their health insurance premiums raised.
Eric S.
So happy I moved out of the yellow pie slice into the big green slice in August.
aimai
Thank you so much for posting this. Very helpful.
MomSense
@Adamchaz:
Yup. Those Republicans and their “culture of life”.
Rob in CT
So the right immediately reacts with see!, we told you it was dooooooomed! It always will be, even 20 years from now (assuming we don’t decide to switch to a single-payer system). Much like Conservatism can never fail (only be failed), Liberalism can only fail – it can produce a temporary mirage of success before, ultimately, failing. 20, 50, 100 years… feh. Sooner or later it’ll all come to tears, just you wait (and if it doesn’t, it’ll sap our precious freedum).
Peej01
I am one of the unfortunate on-exchange, non-subsidized. My rates are definitely going up. However, given my medical history, I’m sure I would be paying a lot more without the ACA….if I could even get insurance in the first place.
workworkwork
@Peej01: I’m in that situation as well. I may have to change plans but I’ll wait until I see my new rate.
OTOH, before the ACA I couldn’t get health insurance at any price and having it literally saved my life this year so there’s that.
dr. bloor
Me and mine got our letter yesterday–our gold plan is going up by 13.5%, no discernible changes in the benefits other than some speciality pharmacy rejiggering. We’ll probably drop down to a silver for the coming year, although the total output over the year (premiums + out-of-pocket) is unlikely to be much different than the past few years.
different-church-lady
I’m thinking the bigger problem is the states where the exchange options will be reduced to a single company. This was a problem for my friends in NH from the beginning of the ACA. For them to switch to an exchange plan meant their nearest doctor would be a 45 min drive.
Sarah
We have Oscar, and they’re dropping nearly all the hospital networks, including the one we use the most. We’re not unhappy with their service, but I’m trying to find a new plan that will include the doctors we see the most frequently. So far it’s a nightmare for everyone concerned. And our rate will go up, too.
Bill
I’m one of those people that’s screwed. What’s worse, the very expensive coverage I have to buy is basically just for catastrophic loss. The deductible is so high that we never hit it.
Congress has to fix this. I have little hope they will.
Tazj
Thank you for writing about this Richard, I was very interested to get your insight regarding this issue. With a few notable exceptions,the press coverage has been horrible. There are no explainations as to why costs are rising or how this doesn’t effect most people. It’s all framed as a campaign headache for Clinton,not as an important problem that needs to be solved.
Trump and Pence have a fantastic answer to the rising costs, just repeal the ACA. What about the people who need healthcare? How will they be taken care of? There’s no pushback from the press about how incredibly stupid and monstrous that answer is.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
whoever this new anchor is on MSNBC in the morning is going over the disastrous Obamacare premium increases with absolutely no context, quoting KA Conway as an authority, and doing so as a question for Bush/McCain operative Steve Schmidt, who is so mad about Trump he barely discusses it.
Saw this last night from New Mexico
burnspbesq
@craigie:
Amen. You could almost get an apartment in Manhattan for what our former Blue Shield of California platinum plan is going to cost in 2017.
dopealope
I’m one of the “unfortunate few”: My California Blue Shield Silver plan is going up about 25%, to about $650.00 a month. Kind of depressing, but I believe I was paying $850 or so before before Obama Care for a HIPAA plan. Is this year just an adjustment year, or are rates going to continue to rise like this?
eclare
@Bill: You and me both. Don’t get insurance from an employer and don’t qualify for subsidies. Yeah, there aren’t many of us, in the big scheme of things, but it still sucks big time. I think my premiums here in TN are going up by about 40%?
Chris
Seems like all us “basket of unfortunates”… to turn a phrase..are chiming in. I havent seen it yet but it looks like my previous silver plan with UHC (who has since turnt tail and run from the NC exchange) is going from approx 800 for a 50 y.o. and two teenagers to 1100 or so….The coverage the teens can purchase at their universities is starting to look good..
Chris
@Bill:
It’s depressing to think that the ACA was the first major advance of its kind in forty years. Even more depressing to wonder if we’ll have to wait forty more years before the holes in the current system are plugged.
Rob in CT
My employer-provided coverage (BCBS PPO) increases for 2017:
Premium = +4%
Copays: +4% for primary, +2.7% for specialist, +16.7% for ER
Deductible: +8.3%
Out of pocket max: +2.9%
I think last year’s premium hike was 5%, but can’t recall the other pieces.
Medical care costs are still rising faster than wages and that’s a problem. The cost curve has been bent, which is great and all, but healthcare costs are still going to slowly eat us all unless we make further changes.
NCSteve
Speaking as one of the screwed, I am sick to fucking death of being contextualized into insignificance by center-left healthcare policy writers for the second year in a row. It feels like they fear that identifying the fact that these hikes are literally going to force a million plus people, most of them middle-aged, to choose between health insurance and holding on to their house or current apartment next year as an urgent problem in need of a fix will be so damaging to the image of the whole law that they’re willing to throw us under the bus for the greater good.
Another Scott
They’re talking about this on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR at the moment. Some good info, but the usual “Obamacare is horrible, the Exchanges deserve a C-/D+, premiums are going through the roof and it’s all Obamacare’s fault, …” talking head is beating the same old dead horse. Susan Page is so very concerned, also too.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Rob in CT
I guess the question is, how can the Democrats fix it? The GOP is going to hold the House and the GOP has every incentive to let any problems play out so they can blame them on the Democrats.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NCSteve: I”m traveling at the moment and won’t find out how screwed I am until I get home and get my mail on Friday– I hope, I’m tired of waiting for the sword to fall. But the context arguments aren’t to make the problems insignificant, it’s to counter the idea promoted by lazy, ignorant people on TV and the radio that these premium increases are the sum total of the ACA, to point out that what it’s problems are, the Republican alternative is nothing, if you listen to Paul Ryan, fantasy, if you listen to Donald Trump (we’re gonna fix it, it’s gonna be so easy) or the only honest Republican on health care in the last twenty years, Ron Paul, who says the poor should die.
I don’t know anyone on the left who says Obamacare doesn’t need work– Obama, both Clintons, Biden, Kaine, Chait, Grunwald, Paul Waldman, Krugman– context free media hysteria makes that work harder.
West of the Cascades
@burnspbesq: Yep, I’m in the narrow yellow band too, in Oregon, and my plan’s rate is going up 26%. I have three other insurance providers in Portland to choose from (on the exchange), none of which has the doctor and clinic I’ve used for eight years in-network. Have some hard decisions to make in the next six weeks, but probably will suck up the price increase. Am trying to think of this situation as “I’m grateful I earn enough to not qualify for the subsidy and am glad the subsidy is there for folks who don’t earn enough to be able to afford health care,” but also would like to see some legislative fix for folks in that yellow slice!
ETA: my single-person Silver PPO plan is going from $495/month to $631/month, for context. It’s painful but it’s not asset-threatening … but could be for some folks. Two years ago it was $400 a month.
Shakti
Is it a problem. Hell yes. Is it a widespread problem. Hell no.
Given the number of employees who are misclassified as 1099s and/or “part time employees”, it’s a growing problem. Also the ACA was supposed to help freelancers and alleviate job lock and 25% increase from year to year doesn’t make health care affordable
Politically most people in that situation do not distinguish between state level actions (refusing to expand Medicaid) and the way the law was designed.
dr. luba
I went to Healthcare.gov, and my plan apparently no longer exists. It was a gold HMO, with high premiums (about $600) but then low (relatively) deductible and total out of pocket costs. Instead the premiums are about 50-60% of what they were, but deductible and OOP have really gone up.
Is this happening elsewhere?
And no letter from my insurer. Have FB’d my PCP to see if she is still participating, as the insurance company can’t be bothered to provide a provider list yet. Technically, yes, it’s not November 1 yet, so……..
Good thing I’m getting all my surgery out of the way this year!
NW Phil
My health plan is going up too (about $100) according to the letter I got from the insurance co. WA is not letting us look at the new exchange rates until Nov. 1st. So we’ll see what choices I have this year. Unfortunately I moved into a county few of the insurance providers are covering, even though it’s right outside the metro area.
Obama blew it by not offering medicare buy-in for those over 50.
dr. luba
@NW Phil:
I recall reading about a Medicare buy in option back when they were trying to pass the ACA. Did they ever have the votes? IIRC, keeping this from happening (allowing Medicare buy in) was one of Liberman’s greatest hits.
We need to recall how tenuous passage of the ACA was, and how nothing has been done since then to fix obvious problems because Obama does not have a congress that will work with him on this.
Another Scott
@dr. luba:
Indeed. There were no votes to spare to pass it, and with the GOP House voting eleventy-seven times to repeal it, there’s been no way to tweak it to fix the problems. We’re lucky to have the PPACA, but it has problems that need to be fixed. Flipping the House and Senate is the first step toward getting those fixes implemented.
Cheers,
Scott.
dr. bloor
@NCSteve: As others have pointed out, contextualization is not minimization, and no one has any interest in throwing anyone under the bus.
Unless those center-left policy writers develop Jedi powers before next term, the US is held hostage by a congress who sticks nihilistically to the strategy that the only allowable change to the ACA is to dismantle it entirely, and to insurance companies who bail out of otherwise-profitable states in a hissy fit because the administration nixed their merger plans.
Unfortunately, most of the country–basically, everybody in the graph above except the yellow and red–remains susceptible to the Republican propaganda because the government or their employers continue to shield them from the true costs of health care by giving them tax-exempt, subsidized insurance coverage. Per Scott’s post above, the fact that logic-challenged nitwits like Diane Rehm* are allowed to perpetuate this nonsense only makes matters worse.
*Stop listening to Diane Rehm, Scott. Her show’s capacity to make you dumber comes in a close second to sports talk radio.
NCSteve
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I understand what the Republicans are doing. I understand how they fear any real acknowledgment that this is a problem in urgent need of a fix will be distorted by Republicans. But effectively, all this talk of “context” signals, at least to those who aren’t committed liberals, a willingness to throw middle class people–many of them people running small businesses, the holy of holies among journalists–under the wheels to protect big gubbimint giveaways to Those People.
My own financial squeeze may be coloring my POV, but this is a catastrophic messaging error. What they need to say, and the central theme of what they say is, “this is a very serious problem that we urgently need to fix, but in the grand scheme of things, a relatively small one urgently in need of a relatively small fix. The real problem, is that the Republicans’ are doubling down on trying to force the law to fail because they wrongly think hurting regular people is in their political and ideological interest, which means they both overstate the problem and stubbornly obstruct effort to fix it.” But instead, what we’re getting is “meh, it’s just a couple of million people. Perspective, people!”
It is a potentially catastrophic messaging error. As soon as the MSM asshats, and worse still, right wing pipelines into the MSM, pick up on that angle and seek out an anecdotal handful of these plucky, heroic entrepreneurs who are being sacrificed to the benefit of the Undeserving Poor Others, you’re going to see an exponential increase in the very damage to public opinion they’re trying to prevent by talking about “context.” Count on it.
KC
According to our office HR person, our company’s health care plan premium is increasing by 30% this year. The company will eat some of that, but I’m probably looking at at least 15% increase for my employer-provided plan. This is a good plan with good benefits, like employers used to regularly provide, but they’re becoming more and more scarce. HR person said we have one of the few full-featured plans out there, which is probably why the premium rose so much.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
No. Joe Lieberman specifically said he would not support expansion of Medicare. Why is it so hard for people to understand that Congress votes on legislation? This “Obama should’ve issued a proclamation from the throne” shit still come up constantly, even here?
dr. bloor
@KC: See the last paragraph of my post at #36. Once employers throw up their hands and pass along the entire 30% to you, or start pushing catastrophic-coverage only policies on you, real change will occur.
And the dike is getting pretty shaky. I can think of a small handful of instances last year where employer-insured families deferred testing or treatment for their kid because the deductible was too big a hit for them to take. Grown-ups defer care for themselves all the time, but it’s the first time in 25+ years that I can recall ever having a working, ostensibly insured parent defer care for their kid.
Lee
I’ve got a lot of GOP friends in my FB feed. It seems a portion of them are getting their health insurance from the Exchanges (even in Texas).
They are beginning to understand how they are getting screwed by the GOP when it comes to subsidies and the general fuckery of the GOP to Obamacare and they are not happy.
At first they complained it was because of Obamacare, but when I pointed out how they are getting screwed (with a link to the Dec ’15 post) they actually seemed to accept what the actual issue is.
Steeplejack
@Richard Mayhew:
From Atrios:
This has a truthy, “fuck, yeah!” feel to it, but I wonder if it’s actually true.
NCSteve
And, just looked at the rates for next year. The cheapest plan on the exchange, a bronze plan with a 100% after 7550(!) deductible and OOP limit, meaning a plan I will never get a dime’s worth of benefit from, is going to cost me more than 20% of my after-tax salary. Twenty percent.
Yes, legally I have the option of going bare without penalty, but FFS, I’m 54.
I potentially have some big python lumps of money coming through next year over and above salary. And, if they come, I’ll be okay. If they don’t, I will literally have to choose between selling my house and having health insurance. And until they come, I’m absolutely screwed.
This is more than 100% what I paid for a similarly horrible Exchange policy two years ago.
I am fresh out of ability to keep things in perspective on this shit. Panic attacks have that effect on me.
burnspbesq
In the back of my cynical mind, there is a small voice saying that this is what this coverage should have cost all along, but the providers low-balled (and ate some losses) chasing market share. I have no idea whether that’s correct, but it’s plausible.
dr. bloor
@NCSteve:
Have you qualified for subsidies in the past?
Also, and I’m trying to say this delicately, try to look at your premium + out-of-pocket max as the worst possible case firewall keeping you out of terminal bankruptcy forever rather than the intrusive, disruptive, quality-of-life degrading influence that it obviously is. You might not have gotten a dime’s worth of benefit out of your plan last year, but if you fall and fracture your hip, or your partner’s gall bladder needs to come out, or you need chemotherapy for anything at all, you’re ahead of the game.
This doesn’t actually have anything to do with “Obamacare,” and everything to do with the cost of healthcare in the US today.