Last month, Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens made national news by claiming that ObamaCare would produce “massive” increases of up to 100 percent in health-insurance premiums here in Georgia. Soon thereafter, he also bragged about doing everything possible as insurance commissioner to obstruct ObamaCare, which pretty much destroys his credibility as a source of unbiased data on the issue.
There’s no question that some people will pay more under ObamaCare, while others will pay less. The more pertinent question is what impact ObamaCare will have on rates overall for those who buy individual or small-group coverage. (Most of the 48 percent of Georgians now insured through their employers, as well as the 24 percent insured through Medicare and Medicaid, won’t see any impact at all.)
Fortunately, non-partisan researchers with considerably more credibility than Hudgens have looked into the question of rate impact and have begun to report their findings. For example, a team of researchers at the well-respected RAND Corp. identified 10 states that they deem representative of the country as a whole and modeled what impact ObamaCare was having on premiums in those states. Their report, released late last month, found that:
— For the United States as a whole, and for nine of the 10 states studied, premiums for small-group coverage overall will be largely unchanged under ObamaCare.
— In three of the 10 states, ObamaCare will raise premiums for individuals; in two states, it will lower premiums for individuals. But for the United States overall, the impact on individual policies will be the same as for small-group policies: “the law causes no change in premiums.”
— Once federal subsidies are applied, RAND’s modeling projects that the average American buying an individual policy through ObamaCare will pay $3,238 a year, compared to $4,085 that he or she would have paid for the same coverage without ObamaCare, a savings of more than $800.
— Three of the states studied by RAND — Texas, Florida and Louisiana — have taken the same course as Georgia by refusing to accept the federal government’s offer to expand Medicaid for lower-income citizens. According to RAND experts, that will force lower-income and less-healthy citizens into the private insurance market, raising insurance premiums in those states by 8 to 10 percent.
If the impact in Georgia is similar — and there’s no reason it wouldn’t be — Gov. Nathan Deal’s decision not to expand Medicaid won’t just affect the hundreds of thousands of Georgians who will be denied Medicaid coverage. It will also jack up rates for many other Georgians who turn to exchanges to buy insurance.
This week, a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation largely echoed the overall RAND findings. The Kaiser survey of rates in large cities in 17 states and the District of Columbia found that ObamaCare rates are generally coming in lower than anticipated. If its projections hold, it too means that Americans on average will be paying less for similar coverage once federal subsidies are included.
Neither the RAND nor Kaiser study directly addressed rate impacts in Georgia. However, Bill Custer, a health-insurance policy expert at Georgia State University, told Georgia Health News that coming rates “are clearly not major rate increases for most people who currently have individual coverage,” and that once subsidies are applied, out-of-pocket insurance costs for many Georgians will be lower than they are today.
So while time will tell, so far the horror stories seem based more on partisanship than reality.
