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MSN Money
Huge Obamacare
price hikes could be coming soon
Dan Mangan
Nearly 7.5 million people who get financial help to buy HealthCare.gov
insurance would face average premium price hikes of a whopping 255
percent if that aid is ruled illegal in a pending Supreme Court case, a
new analysis finds.
And that's just the average price increase across 34 states served by
the federal Obamacare health insurance exchange.
On the low end, the Avalere Health consultancy found, HealthCare.gov
customers in Arizona would face effective average price increases of
122 percent for their coverage. At the other extreme, subsidy-eligible
customers in Mississippi would face an average price hike of a sky-high
774 percent.
The second-highest effective rate increases would come in Alaska, where
Obamacare customers could see average price increases of 449 percent,
Avalere found.
The actual prices of the monthly plans would not change if the
subsidies are taken away from customers, but customers would have to
pay, as a rule, significantly more out of pocket for that coverage if
the financial aid is ended. That could happen as early as this summer
if the Supreme Court says the aid isn't allowed under the Affordable
Care Act.
Avalere CEO Dan Mendelson said Thursday that those kinds of sharp price
spikes his company identified would be met by a mass exodus by
customers from their existing Obamacare plans.
"We expect to see virtually all stakeholders aggressively seek
alternatives to preserve continuity of care" if the Supreme Court rules
for the plaintiffs in the case known as King v. Burwell, said Mendelson.
He noted that the premium increases projected by Avalere's analysis
would primarily affect relatively low-income populations of states
whose governments are controlled by Republicans, because those are the
bulk of HealthCare.gov customers.
The Urban Institute recently estimated that almost 10 million fewer
people would be covered in the individual insurance plan market if the
subsidies are eliminated for HealthCare.gov customers, largely due to
people ceasing to buy insurance altogether because it would no longer
be affordable...
Read the rest of the article at MSN Money
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