The Obama administration, seeking to reassure consumers who could be concerned by increases in more states in the coming weeks, released an analysis showing financial help from the government could soften the blow for people who qualified.
Some insurance regulators have begun announcing their approval of rate increases, including an average jump of 62% for the biggest plan in Tennessee and increases of around 43% in Mississippi and 23% in Kentucky for large carriers.
The Department of Health and Human Services said in an analysis issued on Wednesday that tax credits available to some lower- and middle-income Americans, which are pegged to the cost of insurance in a particular area, would blunt the impact and ensure that around three-quarters of the people who obtained insurance through HealthCare.gov would pay less than $75 a month for coverage.
“Headline rate increases do not reflect what consumers actually pay,” said Kathryn Martin, acting assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the department, which also said the federal government was still on track to spend less on the law than originally forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.
Health plans, stung by large losses in the rocky early years of implementation of the 2010 health law, say they need to raise prices substantially to keep their offerings afloat. Federal officials say some increases reflect the planned end of provisions in the law designed to cushion insurers. They say other shifts are predictable as plans adjust to the law’s overhaul of insurance pricing to require it to be sold equally to all customers regardless of medical history or risk.
But some state regulators say they are facing an unusually difficult scenario in which they had to choose between agreeing to the price increases or seeing the plans withdrawn from some markets entirely, as large insurers Aetna Inc. and UnitedHealthcare have begun doing.
