ANALYSIS: Under Senate Bill, Families Would Pay 25% Less For Health Care In Individual Market

[ProSense]

ANALYSIS: Under Senate Bill, Families Would Pay 25% Less For Health Care In Individual Market

Over the weekend, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released new estimates for how much a typical four-person family will spend on health care under the new merged Senate legislation. Below, I’ve compared the House bill with the Senate alternative and threw in the old Senate Finance Committee (SFC) numbers to show how Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) improved the affordability measures for middle class Americans.

The chart below indicates what percentage of income a family of four purchasing coverage within the new health insurance exchanges can expect to spend in 2016 on a health care plan with an actuarial value of 70% (in 2009 dollars):



Meanwhile, MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber ’s new analysis relies on available CBO data to compare the cost of coverage within the Senate bill’s exchanges to the cost of an individual policy in the non-group market absent reform.

Even though the plan purchased under the Senate legislation would have an actuarial value of 70% — 10 percentage points higher than the policy sold in the individual market absent reform — a family would pay less for reform’s more substantial coverage than they would for a plan that offers less benefits and even fewer consumer protections in the unreformed individual market. Moreover, “the same plan that cost $6,000 without reform would cost $4,460 with reform, or 25% less,” Gruber concludes:

Analysis of the non-partisan information from the CBO suggests that for those facing purchase in the non-group market, the Senate bill will deliver savings ranging from $500 for singles to $1400 for families – even without subsidies. The savings are much larger for lower income populations that receive premium credits. This is in addition to the higher quality benefits that those in the exchange will receive, with actuarial values for low income populations well above what is typical in the non-group market today.

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. Yes, and Judy Woodruff was just ensuring Mike Leavitt was spinning his lies on newshour - that

rates would go up for each family by 3000. per year. The media is complicit in the lies being perpetuated.

[ProSense]

3. It really doesn't matter how in denial anyone remains at this point.

The facts will eventually speak for themselves. It would be good if they can improve the existing bills, but the key is to get a bill passed without watering it down anymore.

[kestrel91316]

2. "Families pay less" sure as hell better not = "singles pay more".

[IndianaGreen]

4. And LGBT couples are not recognized as couples.

[kestrel91316]

5. They always manage to find a way to screw the singles in the US.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. That's right, subsidies for families but only some families

Because without a little bigotry, superstition and discrimination, the faith community will not back it. They have to have the hate, to fill that plate.

[LiberalFighter]

6. I seem to remember Senator Bayh supporting a bill or maybe he was an author

that reduce taxes for families because they are families. But didn't do the same for single people.

Pissed the hell out of me as I know that it costs more to be single than married.

[Clio the Leo]

7. Thanks Proey. NT

[canoeist52]

8. It's a moot point for anyone who already has crap insurance

through work. We can't choose it. As of January, we will have deductibles too.
My 21 yo. daughter just applied for Masshealth to see If they'd let her into the Mass. exchange. No go -her part time job offers "insurance" with deductibles she can't afford - so she's stuck being uninsured.

[bvar22]

10. Is THIS Jonathan Gruber....

...the same Jonathan Gruber who helped design Romney Care for Massachusetts ?

Well, YES it is.

And according to his figures, its all just peachy.

[ProSense]

11. No, this Jonathan Gruber.

He was a key architect of the sweeping health insurance reforms that Massachusetts enacted in 2006, while Mitt Romney was governor.

link

Notice the "while"? There is no such thing as Romney Care.

In fall 2005 as the House and Senate each passed health care reform bills.

The legislature made a number of changes to Governor Romney's original proposal, including expanding MassHealth (Medicaid and SCHIP) coverage to low-income children and restoring funding for public health programs. The most controversial change was the addition of a provision which requires firms with 11 or more workers that do not provide "fair and reasonable" health coverage to their workers to pay an annual penalty. This contribution, initially $295 annually per worker, is intended to equalize the free care pool charges imposed on employers who do and do not cover their workers. The legislature also rejected Governor Romney's proposal to permit even higher-deductible, lower benefit health plans.

On April 12, 2006 Governor Mitt Romney signed the health legislation.<19> He vetoed 8 sections of the health care legislation, including the controversial employer assessment.<20><21> Romney also vetoed provisions providing dental benefits to poor residents on the Medicaid program, and providing health coverage to senior and disabled legal immigrants not eligible for federal Medicaid.<22><23> The legislature promptly overrode six of the eight gubernatorial section vetoes, on May 4, 2006, and by mid-June 2006 had overridden the remaining two.<24>

link

Romney actually opposed the bill after the legislature improved it. Stop giving him credit for something he opposed.

[bvar22]

12. "There is no such thing as Romney Care".

Right.

The disastrous Republican Health Care "reforms" in Massachusetts are commonly called "RomneyCare".

But your strong suit at DU is denying the truth.
Keep up the good work.
Your post denying "RomneyCare" only further erodes your last shreds of credibility here.

[karynnj]

13. Maybe in Arkansas

There is nothing wrong with her link or the information/ The fact is the nearly 80 or 90% Democratic legislature wrote it and passed it - and as said Romney vetoed pasrts of it - but as often happened to him, he was overridden.