Under Obamacare costs are increasing -not

By Flavius on Sun, 12/20/2015 - 11:25pm |

During Saturday's Democratic debate Martha Radatz asked Hillary why the annual cost increases have been higher.

They haven't been.

Check out today's TPM for the correct numbers.

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The meat of the TPM article...

What The Obamacare Question In The Debate Missed About Rising Premiums

---snippet--

While it's unclear exactly the role Obamacare played, the growth of premiums has been lower in the last few years than it was in periods prior, according to a 2014 Kaiser Family Foundation report that was highlighted by FactCheck.org.

That report showed that, yes, premiums increased for covered workers with family coverage by 26 percent between 2009-2014. However, between 2004-2009 those premiums rose by 34 percent, and between 1999-2004 they rose by a whooping 72 percent.

A 2015 report by the the nonpartisan foundation the Commonwealth Fund also showed that premium growth rates had slowed in 31 states and the District of Columbia between 2010 and 2013, when compared to premiums between 2003 and 2010. That study did show that premiums were indeed, nonetheless, taking an increasing share of workers' income, as Raddatz' question suggested. The culprit of that trend, however, the study concluded, was actually low wages, as wages grew more slowly than health care premiums.

~OGD~

by oldenGoldenDecoy on Mon, 12/21/2015 - 2:12am

Obamacare didn't go into effect in 2009. How much have premiums gone up in the period since Obamacare started, and how much had they gone up in the previous two years?

by Aaron Carine on Tue, 12/22/2015 - 8:58am

i don't believe a two year period is long enough to draw any conclusion whatsoever.. So while I think Martha Radatz and ABC's fact checkers were wrong in saying medical prices have increased more rapidly under Obamacase than in the past I was wrong in saying they had increased less rapidly.

Even Homer nods.

The TPM analyst compared successive 5 year periods.and that strikes me as being a reasonable approach .

As I recall the average increase for the period from 1995 to 2000 was higher than the average increase from 2000 to 2005 which in turn was higher than that for the period from 2005 to 2010 and the increase from 2010 to 2015 was lowest of all..

I could be wrong but you could look it up.

by Flavius on Wed, 12/23/2015 - 6:24pm

Under Obamacare costs are increasing -not

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