As Always, Take Obamacare Premium Hike Stories With a Big Grain of Salt

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


The Kaiser Family Foundation has a new report out suggesting that Obamacare premiums are going to skyrocket next year. Maybe so. But before everyone gets into another Trump-inspired tizzy about this, please note the highlighted section of the Kaiser table below:

Insurers always ask for more than they get. In the 13 states that Kaiser examines, insurers have asked for rate increases averaging 11 percent. And who knows? Maybe they’ll get it. More than likely, though, they won’t. This is an opening bid, and the final contract won’t be set for several more months.

So, as usual, take this with a grain of salt. The truth is that Obamacare premiums started out lower than most analysts predicted, because (a) insurers turned out to be really interested in lowballing their prices in order to gain market share, and (b) they didn’t have much data to base their rates on. As the market shakes out, real-world data will become more available and market shares will start to settle down. It’s possible that this will drive a couple of years of semi-large-ish premium increases, but that’s about it. And maybe not even that much.

So don’t panic. We don’t know yet if premiums are really going up 11 percent. But even if they are, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise. The real test will be how the original Obamacare projections compare to real-life premiums in, say, 2019. My guess is that they’ll be fairly close. More here from Charles Gaba, who basically says we just don’t know yet what will happen in 2017.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate