WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) issued the following statement after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed that premiums for “benchmark,” or mid-level health insurance plans on healthcare.gov will increase by an average of 25 percent next year.
“With wages largely flat or even declining and the cost of living going up, millions of middle-class families in Ohio and across the country are already feeling squeezed," said Portman. "In Ohio, we’ve already seen health insurance premiums on the exchange nearly double since the president’s health law went into effect, with double-digit increases for this year. Today the Obama Administration confirms what too many Ohio families already know from experience: health care costs are going up, while health care choices are going down. Ohio deserves better. That’s why we must replace the President’s health care law with better solutions that lower health care costs, increase health care choices, and improve the quality of care.”
NOTE: In an Associated Press report last night, HHS confirmed today that: “Premiums will go up sharply next year under President Barack Obama’s health care law, and many consumers will be down to just one insurer.” For mid-level plans found on healthcare.gov, premiums will increase by an average of 25 percent, and that one out of every five consumers in 39 states have only one insurer to choose from.
According to data from the Ohio Department of Insurance, the average cost of health insurance premiums have increased by a total of 91 percent in the individual insurance market since the president’s health law went into effect. Furthermore, while there were 17 companies approved to offer health care on the federal exchange in Ohio in 2016, only 11 companies have decided to offer plans in Ohio on the federal exchange in 2017. The Ohio Department of Insurance has announced final rate increases for 2017 that show an additional average increase of nearly 13 percent above and beyond 2016’s premiums.
Earlier this year, InHealth Mutual, the Obamacare CO-OP for Ohio, went bankrupt, along with a majority of Obamacare CO-OPs, forcing 20,000 Ohioans to scramble to find new health insurance coverage. Under Senator Portman’s leadership, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report and held a hearing on the state of the CO-OP program on March 10. The widely covered report exposed previously unreported mismanagement, reckless judgment, and taxpayer waste in the Obamacare CO-OP program — a $2.4 billion loan program that launched 23 health insurance start-ups, more than half of which have failed. The report also provided new information on the extraordinary losses racked up by the failed CO-OPs throughout 2014 and 2015, and the dim prospects that taxpayers will recover much, if any, of HHS’s $1.2 billion investment in those companies.
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