Five Years Later: Obamacare Hits Americans with Higher Premiums for Healthcare Coverage

WASHINGTON – In advance of the fifth anniversary of the President’s health law, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) today released a fact sheet outlining how the law has made healthcare coverage less affordable for some Americans as more families, workers, and job creators are getting hit with higher insurance premium costs.

Premiums Spike Under Obamacare: Studies show the healthcare law increased individual market premiums by almost 50 percent in 2014 relative to 2013 prices. On top of the substantial increase in 2014, there was an average increase of about 4 percent in 2015 for benchmark plans.  Even more, a recent report by Avalere Health found the most popular exchange plans increased premiums by 10 percent on average in 2015.

Premiums Have Grown Faster Under Obamacare:A recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that in 2014 premiums in the non-group health insurance market grew by 24.4 percent on average compared to what they would have been without Obamacare.

Premiums Will Continue to Skyrocket Under Obamacare:According to Congress’s nonpartisan budget scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), premiums will increase by about six percent per year.This increase will be driven by a number of factors, including high demand for expensive medical care, higher provider rates as enrollment increases, uncertainty created by haphazard regulatory changes under Obamacare, and the failure of the plans to attract enough “young invincibles.”

Premium Shocks Unsurprising:Despite repeated promises from the Obama Administration that the health law would reduce annual premiums for an average family by $2,500, non-partisan research groups continued to warn that Obamacare would force premium rates to increase.  The CBO, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Oliver Wyman all estimated that premiums would increase under Obamacare. 

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