Major health insurers have already begun to propose significant premium increases for next year in an attempt to cover their higher than expected costs from health plans on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges.
In Oregon and Virginia, the first two states to propose rate hikes for 2017, insurers are asking regulators for premium increases of 30 percent and 20 percent, respectively. This news comes on the heels of last month’s announcement by UnitedHealthcare that it is essentially exiting the Affordable Care Act exchanges after losing more than $1 billion in 2015 and 2016. Other major insurers like Health Care Service Corp. and Highmark also lost hundreds of millions of dollars in 2015.
To try to compensate for such losses, insurers have hiked prices by double-digit percentages year after year. That’s despite the fact that the ACA was promised to lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year. It’s clear that the ACA in its current form is unsustainable. Its promise to provide “more choice, more competition, and lower costs” has resulted in less choice, less competition, and higher prices.
