Republicans are back at it with the Obamacare attacks, because that's what they do. Like clockwork, they start screaming about the "skyrocketing" premiums people buying insurance on the exchanges face. Except, as with most of their claims about, well, anything (but specifically this law), it ain't so. At least not so much as compared to the employer-sponsored plans.
A new analysis from the Urban Institute found that the average unsubsidized premiums in the Affordable Care Act exchanges, commonly known as Obamacare, are actually 10 percent lower than the full premiums in the average employer plan nationally in 2016.
Nationally, the average employer-sponsored premium was $516 a month, while the unsubsidized marketplace premium was $464. To make an apples-to-apples comparison, the researchers adjusted marketplace premiums to account for the age of enrollees and the different value of the health coverage provided by the marketplace plans.
Note that that's the unsubsidized Obamacare premiums, meaning that only a little more than 10 percent of the people with Obamacare plans are paying that full premium. The vast majority of Obamacare subscribers qualify for the subsidy that helps pay premiums. In some areas, the savings between the Obamacare plans and employer-sponsored plans are huge—Obamacare premiums are 35 percent cheaper in Boston and 26 percent cheaper in New York City. In more than three-quarters of the states, and more than 80 percent of major metropolitan areas, employer-sponsored premiums are higher.
Which is a problem—just not with Obamacare, as Republicans would have you believe.
Those premium increases in the employer-based market are one of the reasons healthcare costs are shifting as much as they are to consumers: Employers who have to pay a portion of premiums are looking for plans they can afford and increasingly, that means high-deductibles and high-copays for the employees.
The Affordable Care Act did a great job with the uninsured, it has come in at a much lower cost than predicted, and it's saving Medicare a lot of money. But it can't really tamp down rising costs across the whole system Now it's time to look at larger, more systemic reforms. That should start with something like expanded Medicare—the public option—on the exchanges, and move on from there.