UNEXPECTEDLY! Cost Of Cheapest ObamaCare Plans Is Soaring.

Contrary to expectations, the mandate really doesn’t seem to be doing much to get people to buy insurance, at least yet (the penalty is set to go up again this year, and that may get people to pay attention). The subsidies, on the other hand, clearly have a large effect, which is why the customer base for the exchanges is so disproportionately composed of folks who are getting large amounts of taxpayer assistance to buy insurance. Anything that increases the gap between the cost of the insurance and the subsidy they are getting is therefore worrisome, if you want the exchanges to get and stay healthy.

It is possible to find out what different rates are being charged by insurers in many states; I have a giant spreadsheet of the 2016 rate increases for those states that make them available, and boy does that make me popular at cocktail parties. Unfortunately, we still don’t know what rate increases people are facing, because we don’t know what individuals had in 2015, or what they’ll buy in 2016.

This is frustrating. But a consulting company, Avalere Health, has provided at least slightly more data than we had before, supplementing the administration’s release of the information on benchmark plans by looking at the cost of the cheapest Bronze and Silver policies. It’s still far more limited than one would like, but looking at those rates does give us additional information.

The biggest thing they tell us is that, as I suspected when I wrote about the CMS release, the whole bottom of the market is undergoing a fairly massive repricing. In most states, the cost of the cheapest Silver plan, relative to the cheapest one last year, rose even more than the benchmark rate. And in most states, the cost of the cheapest Bronze plan went up by more than the cost of the cheapest Silver plan.

Good news! You’re now required to buy health insurance that you can’t afford! Also, the deductibles are huge. . . .