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Trump: Obamacare health care premiums 'going up 35, 45, 55 percent'

By Linda Qiu on Sunday, October 25th, 2015 at 6:17 p.m.

[...]

On average, premiums have risen by about 5.8 percent a year since Obama took office, compared to 13.2 percent
in the nine years before Obama. Is it true that we’ll see insurance plans jacked up 35 to 55 percent in 2016?

We reached out to the Trump campaign but didn’t hear back. Experts we talked to and the data
show that while there are examples of premium increases that large, they’re not the norm.

[...]

Just 7 percent of all plans in the federal exchange had a proposed rate hike of 30 percent or higher, estimates Agile Health Insurance,
which bills itself as "an affordable alternative to Obamacare." That translates to average increases at far lower levels than what Trump said.

[...]

All the experts we spoke to warned us that there’s significant variation from plan to plan, from region
to region, and from insuree to insuree. That’s why neither Trump’s claim nor averages tell the whole story.

The disparity in rate increases are more likely adjustments insurers are making, rather than evidence that Obamacare is a "disaster," as Trump says.

After all, 2016 is the first year that insurers are looking at actual claims data instead of "essentially guessing at what their costs were,"
said Levitt of the Kaiser Foundation. "Some insurers guessed better than others, which leads to variations in premium changes."

[...]

Our ruling

Trump said, "People’s premiums … are going up 35, 45, 55 percent."

Some insurance plans in the federal exchange will see price hikes at the levels that Trump is suggesting. But he’s cherry-picking the high end
of premium changes to come. Estimates for the national average are far below Trump’s figures, ranging from 4.4 percent to 13 percent.

Trump’s claim is partially accurate but takes things out of context. We rate it Half True.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/25/donald-trump/trump-obamacare-health-care-premiums-going-35-45-5/