Health insurers who sell individual coverage under the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare are “requesting a median premium increase of 6% for 2024,” a new analysis shows.
Most rate changes for next year are falling “between 2% and 10%” for 2024, according to KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reviewed preliminary rate filings of health insurers across the country.
The health insurers are blaming inflation’s impact on medical costs such as price increases on prescription drugs for the premium growth as well as increased usage of healthcare services, which fell at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 “but has since returned to more normal levels,” said KFF, which examined publicly-available documents from 58 insurers for its analysis.
Consumers won’t see any evidence of price increases until this fall’s open enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1 of this year for coverage next year. But even then, the premium increases should have little impact, KFF said.
“Although most Marketplace enrollees receive subsidies and are not expected to face these added costs, premium increases could result in higher federal spending on subsidies,” KFF said in its report.
The report comes with marketplace enrollment at an all-time high. The Biden administration said earlier this year that a record of more than 16 million Americans have signed up for 2023 healthcare coverage that began Jan. 1, 2023 via the more than 30 states that use the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace and 18 state-based marketplaces.
Health insurers are also projecting solid enrollment for 2024, according to what executives have been saying on their second-quarter earnings calls. With increased enrollment, insurers are therefore keeping premium increases low thanks to additional enrollees that allow them to spread their costs across a larger pool of patients.
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