Democrats Gave Americans a Big Boost Buying Health Insurance. It Didn’t Come Cheap.
KHN 3/24/2021 by Noam N. Levy
Excerpts
By next year, taxpayers will shell out more than $8,500 for every American who gets a subsidized health plan through insurance marketplaces created by the ACA, often called Obamacare. That’s up an estimated 40% from the cost of the marketplace subsidies in 2020, due to the augmented aid, data from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office indicates.
But the large new government commitment underscores the disparity between the high price of private health insurance and lower-cost government plans such as Medicare and Medicaid. Medicaid coverage is still costly: about $7,000 per person every year, federal data indicates. But that’s about 18% less than what the government will pay to cover people through commercial health plans.
The main reason commercial health plans cost more and saddle patients with higher medical bills is because they typically pay hospitals, doctors and other medical providers more than public programs such as Medicaid.
