Reproduced from Kaiser Family Foundation; Chart: Axios Visuals
Insurers on the individual market are expected to pay a record total of about $800 million in rebates to enrollees, a result of setting their premiums too high last year, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.
- Insurers raised premiums in 2018 by an average of 26% — a response to political uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act.
- But instead of market chaos, insurers saw their best financial performance yet under the ACA, as per-person claims rose by only 7%.
- Utilization also remained steady in 2018, meaning healthy people didn't flee the marketplace.
The big picture: The analysis suggests that the ACA marketplaces are stable and profitable for insurers, even if individual market enrollees tend to be sicker than they were pre-ACA.
The bottom line: Despite all of the worrying about the Trump administration's policies, this is "not exactly a market that’s collapsing," Kaiser's Larry Levitt tweeted.
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