Dive Brief:
- Insurers blame increasing premiums on medical costs, not healthcare reform, according a new issue brief from the Commonwealth Fund; CF research concludes that insurers in the individual market attributed 26% and insurers in small group market attributed 31% of medical cost growth to growing use of medical services
- According to the CF summary, medical costs--based more on utilization of services and higher unit prices for those services--drove more than three quarters of large rate increases for non-grandfathered individual and small group plans with more than 150 members.
- Researchers found that the ACA's impact ranged from about 3% of the premium to one third of a percent; Despite this, recent polls suggest that many consumers feel the ACA is driving up health insurance costs.
Dive Insight:
It's no surprise that consumers feel the ACA is driving up healthcare costs. If nothing else, the ACA is highly visible, and makes an easy target when consumers struggle to pay their health care bills. But given the facts, it's important to get the message out to consumers that the ACA is not the source of constantly increasing health plan premiums. Otherwise, the real problem can easily get passed over by policymakers.