Whether the quality of care in the new market is comparable to private offerings remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: The cost of care in the new market doesn't stack up. A single wage earner must make less than $20,000 to see his or her current premiums drop or stay the same under Obamacare, an independent review by National Journal found. That's equivalent to approximately 34 percent of all single workers in the U.S. seeing any benefit in the new system. For those seeking family-of-four coverage under the ACA, about 43 percent will see cost savings. Families must earn less than or equal to $62,300, or they, too, will be looking at a bigger bill.
Those numbers include the generous tax subsidies designed to make the new system more attractive to consumers.
"In 16 states that HHS studied, premiums were on average almost 20% lower than what the Congressional Budget Office projected," Peters wrote in an e-mail.
Premiums may be lower than predicted, but they're not competitive with what workers are now paying for employer-sponsored care.
On average, a worker paid between $862 and $1,065 per year for single coverage in 2013, according to Kaiser's numbers. For the average family plan, defined as a family of four, insurance cost between $4,226 and $5,284.
Fewer than half of all families and only a third of single workers would qualify for enough Obamacare tax subsidies to pay within or below those averages next year. ...
In places where the median family income is higher, the number of people who benefit from cost savings will be even lower. It's a tough reality for California, which is home to the largest number of uninsured people in the country (6.7 million) and therefore viewed as the most important test for the success of the new federal health law. ...The trap is that the exchanges also present a savings for some employers but a rate hike for their employees.
And shifting employees to the exchanges also is just logistically easier than trying to meet the law's employer mandate. ...
