Health Insurance Premiums on the ACA, North Carolina numbers

[Dekster]

That is not an unreasonable premium for a couple of that age, especially for a silver plan. Maybe a $1500 deductible and co-pays for office and specialist visits. My company and I paid that much In premium 25 years ago. Albeit a "gold" level plan.100% coverage, no deductibles, no co-pays. The card was black, insured by Mass Mutual, didn't even know they did health insurance.

I went to the healthcare website and plugged in 2 adults aged 55 non smokers making 125K in Wake County NC and the closest I could find to those numbers was a $1K per person deductible/$9K per person cap Gold plan for about $3K per month. There were bronze plans for the hypothetical empty nesters at around $1500-$1700 per month. Yes it is pricey, but the median household income in NC is only $70K so the hypothetical couple would still be doing better than most With a $36K/year gold plan.

 

[SweetSue92]

Federal premium help for ACA plans is changing | Blue Cross NC

Discover how changes to federal subsidies could impact your ACA health plan costs in 2026.

www.bluecrossnc.com

So the numbers are starting to come out and they sure are eye numbing.

I mean a young single person, 30 years old making 25 grand a year. He will see his premium rise from $50 bucks a month to $150. Might think that doesn't sound bad until you consider it is almost five percent of his yearly income.

Now, family of four making 60 grand a year. And I got to wonder, how can someone support a family of four on sixty grand? It is going to be tight. Hell, two teen boys and thirty percent of that sixty grand is going for food. They will see a premium increase from $250 a month to $600 a month. Dee Yam. $4200 a year more. For this family, it is going to be painful.

But now the big one. Middle aged couple, 45. Maybe new empty nest, kids all grown and raised. At the height of their careers. I am thinking self-employed plumbers, electricians. They make $125,000 a year. Which wasn't that much when the kids were in college, but now, grandkids coming, it is enough to live comfortably and do a little spoiling, after all, the house is paid for. Although that $885 month health insurance premium was hard, at your age, it was a bargain. Now, $2,918 month. Over $24,000 a year increase, over two grand a damn month.

If anything, this will probably be the death of the silver plans. They will descend into a death spiral. There will be some substitution, high deductible Bronze plans. But millions will just become frustrated and leave the risk pool. The three examples above the precise demographic you want IN the risk pool.

And to close this out, in researching this increase through BCBS I found that medical inflation, this year, THIS YEAR, will exceed any level since before the ACA--yes, Obamacare. So any claim Republicans make about "fixing" anything clearly means nothing, and any claim about the ACA causing massive health care inflation is comical.

If this isn't yet a disaster, it's very very close to one.