Robert Laszewski @ Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review:
What will health insurance cost in 2014?
Will the new health insurance exchanges be ready on time or will the law have to be delayed?
There Will Be Sticker Shock!
First, get ready for some startling rate increases in the individual and small group health insurance marketplace due to the changes the law dictates.In a November 2009 report, the CBO estimated that premiums in the individual market would increase 10% to 13% on account of the health insurance requirements in the ACA. In the under 50 employee small group market, the CBO estimated that premiums would increase by 1% to a decrease of just 2% compared to what they would have been without the ACA. All of these differences in premium would be before income based federal subsidies are applied to anyone’s premiums.
In recent weeks, the Obama administration issued a series of proposed regulations for the health insurance market. Since then, I conducted an informal survey of a number of insurers with substantial individual and small group business. None of the people I talked to are academics or work for a think tank. None of them are in the spin business inside the Beltway. Every one of them has the responsibility for coming up with the correct rates their companies will have to charge.
Hold onto your hat.
On average, expect a 30% to 40% increase in the baseline cost of individual health insurance to account for the new premium taxes, reinsurance costs, benefit mandate increases, and underwriting reforms. Those increases can come in the form of outright price increases or bigger deductibles and co-pays.
In states with the least mandates or for health insurance companies with the tightest underwriting now, the increase could be a lot more.
But when you add the impact of the requirement that older consumers can be charged no more than three times as much as the youngest consumers (the usual standard is now a five times difference), premiums increase dramatically for the youngest.