Normally, I don't start posting natoinal projections for my annual Rate Hike Project until I have at least filing data for at least a dozen or so states because the national weighted average jumps around so much early on. A "national average" of, say, 10% based on numbers from, say, Vermont, Wyoming and the District of Columbia (collective population: 1.9 million people) is gonna change radically once you add California or Florida to the mix if they're looking at a 20% hike, for example.
Having said that, seeing how advocacy organization Protect Our Care has decided to launch their own version of my Rate Hike Project, and seeing how I do have preliminary 2019 rate increase projections from at one large state (Virginia) and two mid-sized states (Maryland and Oregon), I've decided to go ahead and start posting the national projections early, with a major caveat that the national average will likely change dramatically until at least 2/3 of the states have been plugged in.
In 2018, unsubsidized premiums for ACA-compliant individual healthcare policies have shot up by around 30% on average nationally. Around 18 points of this (60% of the total) is due specifically to policy decisions by the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans, primarily the cut-off of Cost Sharing Reduction reimbursement payments and the (accurate, as it would later develop) anticipation, by some carriers, of the ACA's individual mandate being repealed.
What about 2019, however? The 2-3 points tacked on out of concern for the mandate being repealed was only a small portion of the full impact insurance carriers expect it to have, and of course there's the further undermining of the ACA via Donald Trump's "Short Term" and "Association Plan" executive orders. Finally, there's the impact of what is assumed to be another year of the advertising/outreach budget being starved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid.
Last winter and spring, you may recall that I crunched a ton of data to come up with my best estimates about just how many people were projected to lose their healthcare coverage at the Congressional District level in the event various versions of Affordable Care Act repeal/replacement bills were to be signed into law (the AHCA, BCRAP, ORRA and so forth). After the first couple of attempts, the folks over at the Center for American Progress took over much of the heavy lifting on my part.
CAP started breaking the numbers out, leaving me to separate them out into easily-sharable state-level infographics (I also added partisan info for each member of Congress, since every Democrat has been steadfastly opposed to each one of these bills, while just about every Republican has supported most of them so far).
All eyes are on the Godawful Tax Scam Bill this week, which once again lies mostly in the hands of a handful of Republican Senators including the usual suspects like John McCain, Lisa Murkwoski and Susan Collins.
McCain's biggest beef this year has been about "following regular order"; it's the reason he shot down the GOP's #BCRAP bill last summer. Of coruse, current tax bill most certainly isn't following regular order either. Will he stick to his guns on the issue or cave under pressure this time? Who knows?
