With the fourth open enrollment season for the affordable care Act (ACA) to come up, market insurers are doing their best to estimate health insurance costs for 2017. While some projections were more accurate than others, most insurance companies have suffered widespread losses since entering the market, leading to discussions of how to increase revenues.
higher health insurance costs expected in 2014
The ACA required a very big change when it prohibits insurers from taking pre-existing conditions into account when determining the status of a candidate. This means that people who had previously been denied insurance were now able to get a plan on the market, regardless of current health problems.
Insurers should many people matching this description would sign for the plans, but assumes that revenues healthy people would help ease the burden of health insurance costs for people looking medical treatment more frequently. What happened instead was that less healthy people applied than expected, leading to lower revenues and rising health insurance costs.
Difference projections of health insurance costs
When market insurers base their projections for 2014, they underestimated how many people would enroll in health insurance for the first time in their life. On average, medical claims were 5.7 percent higher than expected, which boils down to a difference of about $ 23.00 per person per month (PPPM).
Some insurance companies have fared better than others, evidenced by the 35 percent of the gaps identified between the actual health insurance costs compared to their projections. While this may speak to poor projections, we can not overlook the costs associated with a large number of Americans previously uninsured desperately need medical care for pre-existing conditions.
Source: Commonwealth Fund
health insurance costs you can expect in 2017
instead of taking another huge loss, United Healthcare announced it would pull the blanket of most states by the end of calendar year 2016. Hoping to learn from their experience of 2014, most insurers are opting to increase their high prices by an average of 9 percent to offset the expected health insurance costs.
It is important to note that all States will experience the same increases. In fact, some enrolled Rhode Island may notice a slight decrease in premiums in 2017. The data varies considerably across the country and are not available for all states, so this information is best used as a general guideline to help financial planning.
Conclusion
Although it is difficult to predict how many of cost of health insurance will change in 2017, it is important to be patient and keep in mind that this system is still very new. As time passes, the kinks will be developed and should feel more stable for buyers market. In the meantime, be sure to plan accordingly for a possible increase in premiums.
How will you manage the changes in your Medicare costs? Let us know in the comments below!
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