The House Energy and Commerce Committee has compiled data, which shows the estimated increases in individual market premiums due to Obamacare and provides a chart showing those figures, by state.
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| Source: “The Price of Obamacare’s Broken Promises,” report by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Majority Staff, Senate Committee on Finance Minority Staff, and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Minority Staff, March 2013. |
Via Heritage:
While there are many provisions that will increase premiums, two will have the most expensive impact:
- Age rating restrictions. Obamacare limits variation in premium costs to a ratio of 3 to 1 based on age. But as Heritage research shows, “The natural variation by age in medical costs is about 5 to 1—meaning that the oldest group of (non-Medicare) adults normally consumes about five times as much medical care as the youngest group.” This means that under Obamacare, young adults will pay significantly higher premiums than they would have prior to Obamacare, and older adults will pay only slightly lower premiums.
- New benefit mandates and cost-sharing rules. Heritage expert Ed Haislmaier explains, “The new law adds a number of health care services that insurers must cover and in some cases restricts the ability of insurers and employer self-insured health plans to impose limits on the amount of services patients can consume. This combination will drive up health plan costs and premiums for both individual insurance and employer-group coverage.” In addition, Obamacare prohibits cost sharing on many preventative services, which will dramatically increase utilization of those services—pushing premiums even higher.
The eight-page Energy and Commerce Committee report embedded below.
Obamacare Premium Report uploaded by Susan Duclos
