A report has found that Obamacare premiums, even for the cheapest plans that many low income families purchased, are set to go up at least 11 percent just ahead of Election Day in November.
The new reports find that the most popular type of insurance sold by the Obamacare insurance marketplaces across the country will be hit with higher premiums at a faster clip by 2017 than they have faced in recent years.
Costs for the Obamacare “silver” plans, some of the most popular choices for middle and lower income Americans, will rise up to 11 percent, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation released this week.
The “silver” plans have been purchased by 68 percent of Obamacare exchange visitors.
The fee hikes come after many insurers found they had underestimated the costs connected with the plans and began to realize massive losses due to the error.
Insurers noted that those choosing the “silver” plans are those who tend to be sicker and whose care is more expensive.
According to a study earlier this year reported by Fox News, “New enrollees in individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 had higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, depression, coronary artery disease, HIV and Hepatitis C than those enrolled before ObamaCare” and “received significantly more medical care, on average, than those with individual or employer-based plans.”
The chief reason for the hike is that new enrollees often had pre-existing conditions which caused costs for care to soar.
But the hikes are not unexpected and were noted as early as April as insurers began to report the losses.
“There are absolutely some carriers that are going to have to come in with some pretty significant price hikes to make up for the underpricing that they did before,” Sabrina Corlette, a professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, told The Hill in April.
Also in April, Larry Levitt, an expert on Obama’s signature healthcare law at the Kaiser Family Foundation, noted, “The industry is clearly setting the stage for bigger premium increases in 2017.”
The latest news of yet another premium hike runs contrary to President Obama’s blithe pre-Obamacare claims that if we liked our doctors and insurance plans we could keep them, as well as his false claim that his Obamacare law would cut premium costs by $2,500 for every family.
The new reports also come on the heels of yet another major healthcare provider exiting the Obamacare exchanges due to massive financial losses. The repeated failures of the state exchanges will likely result in costing the federal government billions of dollars.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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