Healthcare

Report: Trump’s Obamacare Threats Trigger Premium Hikes

Written by SK Ashby

According to a study conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Trump's rage tweets and threats against cost-sharing subsidies for insurers will lead to double digit premium increases this year for many people.

Most of us expected to see that, but their study also found that Trump's threats to other elements of Obamacare will also lead to higher premiums.

Insurers that assumed that Trump would make good on his threat to stop billions in payments to subsidize copayments and deductibles requested additional premium increases ranging from 2 percent to 23 percent, the report found.

Insurers that assumed the IRS under Trump would not enforce unpopular fines on people who remain uninsured requested additional premium increases ranging from 1.2 percent to 20 percent.

“In many cases that means insurers are adding double-digit premium increases on top of what they otherwise would have requested,” said Cynthia Cox, a co-author of the Kaiser report. “In many cases, what we are seeing is an additional increase due to the political uncertainty.

The bottom line is that premiums are going to go up for most people every year just as they did before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, but premiums will increase even more when the executive branch is explicitly threatening to destabilize the market.

And we're not out of the woods yet. Trump could cut cost-sharing payments at any time and I expect he'll threaten to do so in the coming weeks as Congress decides if we're going to have a government shutdown or not.