Get ready, America — health care premiums are going up, if Republicans in the Senate pass the American Health Care Act — and maybe even if they don’t. And it’s not going to be pretty.
The AHCA, passed by the House, has pretty much been panned by everyone but Republicans — and even some of them — for its cuts to essential services, coverage, Medicaid and funding. But it was passed without a Congressional Budget Office review — and now that’s come home to roost, in some spectacularly negative ways — including the loss of coverage by an additional 23 million people over 10 years.
While the CBO says premiums would rise under the AHCA by an average of 20 percent in 2018 for those who buy coverage directly from an insurer or from an exchange, the Century Foundation, a think tank, has created an interactive map to demonstrate the effect on unsubsidized insurance prices in every county in the country. A 40-year-old consumer can click on the map for his or her home county to see what the AHCA will do to his or her health insurance premiums.
The Century Foundation analyzed data from The think tank conducted its analysis using the CBO report as well as pricing data from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
According to the Century Foundation, “The map … shows that, for a forty-year-old, marketplace premiums would increase from $494 in Blanco County, Texas to $2,376 [in] Yukon-Koyukuk County, Alaska. These amounts would be even higher for older enrollees who, starting in 2018, could be charged as much as five times more than young adults for individual market coverage.”
Hartford County, Connecticut, for instance, would see a premium rise of $969, while residents of Garfield County, Montana, would have to fork over an additional $1,152. The map is color-coded to reflect price increases of less than $900, increases between $900–$1,099 and increases over $1,100, in increasingly deep shades of red — and the effect is quite dramatic (as it would be on an insured’s wallet). In fact, the entire state of Alaska is the deep red indicating the highest increases, with all over $2,200 per year.
One other thing to remember: the Foundation adds the rate hike may happen even if the AHCA doesn’t pass into law. Because “[o]n his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order to scale back Affordable Care Act (ACA) policies which could have a similar double-digit impact as the ACHA next year,” and he and administration officials “have threatened to stop making payment for cost sharing subsidies should the AHCA not pass Congress,” the Foundation points out, “[e]xperts estimate that this, too, would raise premiums in 2018 by an additional 19 percent.”
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