I recently decided to dig into things a bit, and get some historical data on premiums, as this is the primary attack against the ACA by those who argue for its repeal.
Here’s something I found.
Note, this is from 2012, prior to the ACA. Thus, it was not created to defend the ACA, but rather to argue for why we needed healthcare reform.
An important data point here, is the rate at which healthcare premiums were rising prior to the ACA. Note, they discuss the trend from 2003-2011 (many folks seem to forget how premiums were skyrocketing at that point. I don’t.).
With the trend from 2003-2011, they talk about the projected premiums in the future (which is now the present), for the purpose of discussing potential savings. But the actual value of these projections is important to note.
Extrapolating from the trend of national premium prices in the period prior to enactment of the ACA, they were projecting that in 2015 the national average for healthcare premiums would be $18,721. (Exhibit 10, page 15)
In 2016, with folks complaining about how their premiums have exploded, what was the national average premium? $18,142.
So we see that in 2016, with the ACA, premiums are actually lower than they would likely have been WITHOUT the ACA, a year earlier. So the ACA’s apparent effect on premiums is potentially that it slowed the growth rate of premiums slightly. It certainly did not result in them skyrocketing, as it is portrayed by many in the media.