From 2016 to 2018, 2.5 million customers who failed to qualify for a subsidy dropped their coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare), a 40 percent falloff, according to data released Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
CMS Administrator Seema Verma
“As President Trump predicted, people are fleeing the individual market. Obamacare is failing the American people, and the ongoing exodus of the unsubsidized population from the market proves that Obamacare’s sky-high premiums are unaffordable,” said CMS Administrator Seema Verma.
The CMS report released yesterday shows that people who do not qualify for subsidies continue to be priced out of the market. Following a decline of 1.3 million unsubsidized people in 2017, another 1.2 million unsubsidized people left the market in 2018. These enrollment declines among unsubsidized enrollees coincided with increases in average monthly premiums of 21 percent in 2017 and 26 percent in 2018.
The decline began in 2016, as 23 states saw decreases from 2015 to 2016 among unsubsidized enrollees. Forty-three states saw decreases in unsubsidized enrollment from 2016 to 2017, and 47 states saw a decline from 2017 to 2018. During this most recent year, nine states including, Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas and West Virginia, lost more than 40 percent of their unsubsidized enrollment.
Even with the defections, Obamacare enrollment remains fairly steady at 10.6 million, and in 2019 premiums dropped by just under 1 percent, with monthly average being $594.17.
However, due to an increase in subsidized policies (and military spending), the federal deficit jumped to $867 billion fiscal-year-to-date, compared to $684 billion in the same period last year, according to the Treasury Department.