No Rate Shock? Obamacare Premiums Lower Than Expected
The main takeaway from an exhaustive new study of premiums on the Obamacare health insurance marketplaces: They’re generally going to be lower than expected, undercutting the persistent claims of “rate shock” by conservatives.
Marketplaces premiums are coming in below initial estimates, said the nonprofit, nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation in a new report released Thursday.
The expected monthly premium for a 40-year-old adult purchasing a silver-level plan (the baseline, which covers 70 percent of costs) on a marketplace had been $320, according to previous projections from the Congressional Budget Office. But in 15 of the 18 regions studied by Kaiser, the average premium will be below that — thus the study’s conclusion that the prices are going to be lower than anticipated.
“While premiums will vary significantly across the country, they are generally lower than expected,” the authors wrote.
The study does not compare marketplace premiums with current prices in the individual insurance market. Instead, that conclusion is based on how released prices are comparing to previous projections for coverage costs under Obamacare. It follows a report last week by RAND, which suggested that claims of premium increases had been overstated.