Democrats are panicking about a looming 75% average increase in the out-of-pocket cost of insurance premiums next year for the roughly 6% of the population that shops for coverage on Obamacare’s exchanges. Their panic led them to shut down the government at the end of September.
The increase is a function of the expiration at the end of this year of generous enhanced premium subsidies enacted by the Biden administration as part of the March 2021 American Rescue Plan Act and extended as part of the August 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The complicated scheme of premium subsidies would return to the structure in force in 2014, when the exchanges opened.
Individual-market premiums over the last decade-plus have been surging. Between 2013 and 2014, when Obamacare’s many regulations took effect, they rose 47%. Average premiums for benchmark plans rose 75% between 2014 and 2024.
In other words, Obamacare has been an engine of insurance premium inflation. Democrats have tried to cover up that fact with ever more taxpayer subsidies. Yet another round of subsidies will not fix that fundamental problem.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member