Indiana’s Increased Marketplace Rate Filings Harm Hoosiers
Protect Our Care Calls for the Sabotage to Stop
Rate filings for 2019 individual-market health insurance released today show the two companies offering health insurance to Hoosiers through the Marketplace established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have asked for maximum increases of 33.6 percent and 5.4 percent. The Indiana Department of Insurance says the overall average rate increase for 2019 Indiana individual-marketplace plans is 5.1 percent.
The Rate Filings
The Indiana Department of Insurance published 2019 rate filings today from CareSource Indiana and Celtic (MHS/Ambetter) and said it anticipates that all 92 counties in Indiana will be covered by at least one insurance company.
CareSource plans to cover 79 counties. Celtic (MHS/Ambetter) plans to increase its coverage from 43 counties in 2018 to all 92 counties in 2019.
In a Protect Our Care Indiana teleconference held yesterday, Indianapolis resident Adam Brand said he was worried about how they will manage any increases in the Marketplace health insurance he purchases for his family.
“It will be a struggle,” he said.
Adam and Trisha Brand, along with nearly 147,000 other Hoosiers last year, turned to health insurance provided by the ACA. The Brands currently pay about $1,150 a month for a plan that includes a $14,000 deductible. Their children – Veda is 4 and Sully is 2 – have had chronic ear infections and are asthmatic.
“It’s like stories of older people cutting their meds in half because they couldn’t afford rent and their prescriptions,” Trisha Brand said. “We already put off home maintenance because of our medical bills. We really can’t take much more.”
Protect Our Care’s National Campaign Director Brad Woodhouse said the cause of the Brand’s worry can be clearly traced.
“For the past year and a half, President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have engaged in a deliberate, aggressive campaign to undermine health care and now families in Indiana are being asked to pay the price. Until we stop Washington Republicans’ attacks on health care, experts predict that rates will keep rising by double digits. Washington Republicans should start working on bipartisan solutions to make coverage more affordable.”
Why Hoosiers’ Insurance Is Getting Even More Expensive: The Trump Administration and Washington Republicans Keep Sabotaging Health Care
While spending most of last year trying to repeal the ACA and waging a war on our health care, President Trump and Republicans in Congress have also used their control of Washington to actively undermine the Health Insurance Marketplace every chance they get – leading insurance companies to raise premiums for 2018 and 2019 and, in some cases, forcing them out of the individual market altogether. Washington Republicans’ goal is simple: sabotage and undermine the Affordable Care Act, then blame everyone but themselves for the consequences of their actions. President Trump keeps rooting for disaster, saying that “The best thing we can do…is let Obamacare explode” and “Let it be a disaster because we can blame that on the Democrats.”
The Trump Administration’s sabotage will punish Americans by jacking up premiums again, compounding the damage done last year, when Republican sabotage pushed rates up by a national average of 37 percent, and 26 percent in Indiana.
Protect Our Care Indiana is a localized member of the national Protect Our Care coalition of health care advocates, providers, consumers, and workers, joining together to prevent the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), prevent disastrous changes to Medicaid, and protect and expand access to quality affordable health care.