The number of people enrolling in Obamacare plans for this year dropped slightly from the year before, while premium increases for those receiving tax credits were far smaller on average than many expected, according to federal data released Wednesday.
Nationally, 83% — or more than 10 million consumers — of those who selected a plan had premiums reduced by tax credits, and these people on average only saw their premiums jump by $1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported. The average value of the tax credits received was $383 per person per month.
It was, however, people who weren't eligible for federal tax credits that were most vocal about Affordable Care Act premium increases. These increases hit people buying their own insurance in states including Arizona and North Carolina particularly hard, leading to many of the changes included in an ACA replacement bill introduced by Republicans in Congress earlier this month.
Today's high school's are frozen in time. How would you rethink high school?
The 4% drop in ACA signups — from 12.7 million last year to 12.2 million this year — may be due in part to the new Trump administration's cutback on advertising ahead of the open enrollment deadline of Jan. 31. Both President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price have long vowed to repeal the health care law.
Read more:
Obamacare repeal will increase the number of uninsured by 24 million by 2026, CBO says
White House spokesman Sean Spicer knocks CBO report on Obamacare repeal
About $4 million in ads were canceled in the days leading up to the deadline after Trump was sworn in. A study out Wednesday in Health Affairs underscored the importance of advertising and marketing to attract new consumers to health insurance. The study compared ACA signups with the number of ads during the first open enrollment period for 2014 and found that for every additional 1,000 insurance ads, there was an average decline of 0.1 percentage points in the uninsured rate.
Obamacare signups rose as the deadline approached for both 2015 and 2016 enrollment. There is typically a sharp uptick in signups at the deadline, but enrollment appeared near flat toward the end of the open enrollment period this year, despite polling showing increased support for the law.
"You would expect it to rise rapidly. Everyone does things at the deadline," said Adams Dudley, a physician who directs the Center for Health Care Value at the University of California, San Francisco. “That’s normally the most important time to remind people so (the ad cuts) could have had some effect,"
Also Wednesday, a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that more people expect the new Republican ACA replacement plan will "make things worse rather than better" when it comes to who has insurance and what it costs them. Republicans, however, were more optimistic, and nearly half said they expect the plan to decrease costs, while a third said it will increase the number of people covered.
Also significant to note, says Dudley, is that about 75% of people chose plans on their own, rather than be re-enrolled automatically.
"There's no question Americans need and want health insurance," says Dudley. "As long as Obamacare is the law of the land, people are going to try to get it."
