Politics and Money

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Skyrocketing Obamacare premiums? Not in comparison to employer plans

Republicans are back at it with the Obamacare attacks, because that's what they do. Like clockwork, they start screaming about the "skyrocketing" premiums people buying insurance on the exchanges face. Except, as with most of their claims about, well, anything (but specifically this law), it ain't so. At least not so much as compared to the employer-sponsored plans.

A new analysis from the Urban Institute found that the average unsubsidized premiums in the Affordable Care Act exchanges, commonly known as Obamacare, are actually 10 percent lower than the full premiums in the average employer plan nationally in 2016.

Nationally, the average employer-sponsored premium was $516 a month, while the unsubsidized marketplace premium was $464. To make an apples-to-apples comparison, the researchers adjusted marketplace premiums to account for the age of enrollees and the different value of the health coverage provided by the marketplace plans.

Note that that's the unsubsidized Obamacare premiums, meaning that only a little more than 10 percent of the people with Obamacare plans are paying that full premium. The vast majority of Obamacare subscribers qualify for the subsidy that helps pay premiums. In some areas, the savings between the Obamacare plans and employer-sponsored plans are huge—Obamacare premiums are 35 percent cheaper in Boston and 26 percent cheaper in New York City. In more than three-quarters of the states, and more than 80 percent of major metropolitan areas, employer-sponsored premiums are higher.

Which is a problem—just not with Obamacare, as Republicans would have you believe.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/20/1572023/-Skyrocketing-Obamacare-premiums-Not-in-comparison-to-employer-plans