A surge of competition from health insurers has helped drive down the cost of many Obamacare plans for 2015 in nearly two-thirds of Georgia counties, new data shows.
Nationwide, monthly premiums dropped in many places where insurers new to the Health Insurance Marketplace are offering the least expensive plans, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis released Monday. The newcomers have also helped curtail price hikes in hundreds of counties, the Kaiser report shows. Georgia has four additional insurers offering coverage for 2015, bringing the total to nine.
This shows the marketplace is thriving and insurers are expecting Georgia consumers to continue seeking coverage, said Cindy Zeldin, executive director of Georgians for a Healthy Future, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group.
“For many Georgians who are uninsured, cost is the biggest barrier to enrolling in coverage,” Zeldin said. “Competition helps to keep rates down and there is also financial help available for consumers, but still many Georgians are stretching their budgets to purchase health insurance.”
The federal marketplace kicked off its second open enrollment last month with nearly half a million Americans selecting health plans through HealthCare.gov in the first week. Consumers have until Feb. 15 to sign up for 2015 coverage.
Across the country, the number of insurers offering “silver” plans, the most popular plan in 2014, is increasing in two-thirds of counties, according to the analysis. In counties that are adding at least one insurer next year, premiums for the least expensive silver plan are rising 1 percent on average. Where the number of insurers is not changing, premiums are growing 7 percent on average.
Premiums went up in metro Atlanta counties but overall were down across the state.
Many insurers were cautious about widely offering policies in 2014 without a good sense of how much others were charging and how expensive it would be to provide medical services to new customers. UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest insurers, offered plans in only four marketplaces this year nationwide but says it is selling plans in Georgia and 22 other states in 2015.
Joe Antos, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, said carriers that avoided the rough first year were able to study what their competitors were offering before jumping in. “This was a bet that paid off,” Antos said.
Silver plans are popular in part because they offer consumers mid-level premiums with deductibles that are not sky high. They tend to carry annual deductibles of between $1,500 and $5,000 and require insurers to pick up an average of 70 percent of medical costs. The federal government subsidizes premiums for those earning less than four times the nation’s poverty level.
Kaiser’s analysis looked at premiums for the lowest-cost silver plan for a 40-year-old in 34 states, including Georgia, where the feds are running marketplaces for people who don’t get coverage through their employers.
In Georgia, the average price for the cheapest silver plan fell 4 percent. Meanwhile, slightly more than a third of Georgia counties saw an increase in prices with 11 percent experiencing price jumps in the double digits.
It’s important to note, however, that plan prices vary widely from person to person and region to region, said Bill Custer, a health insurance expert at Georgia State University. The premiums are based on a person’s age, family size, where he lives, whether he smokes and what level of plan — bronze, silver, gold or platinum — he chooses. (
The premium change from 2014 to 2015 for the least expensive silver plan ranged from a 24 percent drop in Coffee County to a 25 percent spike in Laurens County, the federal data shows.
Many of the areas where prices went up the most were in rural regions where the population turned out to be sicker than insurers anticipated, Custer said. A lack of outreach in those areas also meant there were fewer — and sicker people — signed up to spread the risk over, he said.
Statewide, nearly 317,000 Georgians signed up for marketplace plans in its first year. Custer estimates 150,000 to 200,000 more could buy 2015 coverage.
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