Obamacare is expensive and it’s only going to get worse. The Obama administration released some data showing that premiums for midlevel plans will rise, on average 25% between 2016 and 2017. Apparently the premiums are rising mainly because people who signed for coverage were sicker than the insurance companies expected.
Many health insurers like Aetna and UnitedHealth left the marketplace and those that stayed had to make up their losses by increasing premiums in order to cover medical bills. The number of plans is shrinking because of the declining number of insurers participating. The total number of HealthCare.gov insurers will drop from 232 this year to 167 in 2017—that’s a loss of 28%.
About 83% of people enrolled in Obamacare receive subsidies, which limits the amount they have to spend on premiums, the rest the government takes care of, based on their income. Most of those people pay zero to a minimum cost, so it might not affect them too much. They might simply have to switch to a new plan that is offering a lower premium than the one they already have. The 17% of Obamacare enrollees that don’t receive premium subsidies—they will be affected by the increase.
This can cause a lot of headaches in the long run, especially for people with chronic conditions. When changing plans, people might also need to change doctors or prescriptions when they switch to different insurers.
Insurers are afraid that as the costs rise, more individuals will decide not to buy health plans. Healthy people are not getting health insurance through Obamacare, because the out-of-pocket prices aren’t worth it. In the long run this will create a population that is getting sicker and sicker.