As ironic as it may seem, the comprehensive health plan requirements of the Affordable Care Act may actually be driving healthy people away from the ACA marketplaces.
That was the theme of several witnesses who testified at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing that focused on the double-digit premium increases expected for ACA marketplace plans in 2017.
“Overreach by the ACA has contributed to high and growing health insurance premiums,” Joel White of the Council for Affordable Health Coverage told the committee. That has resulted in “an unbalanced and expensive market that is driving away many of the healthy consumers the exchanges need to attract in order to hold coverage costs down over the long term,” he said.
The median premium request filed by insurers for ACA plans for 2017 is 19.2 percent higher than 2016 rates, White said. For millions of people, “Health coverage is less affordable and more out-of-reach than when the ACA was enacted six years ago,” he said.
Under the ACA, moderate- and low-income people can get subsidies for plans bought through the marketplaces, and White called for providing the subsidies for people who buy coverage in private exchanges as well.
He also suggested allowing plans to be sold under the ACA that cover only 50 percent of medical claims on average. The lowest actuarial value allowed under the ACA is 60 percent.