The new report is from the Kaiser Family Foundation. It’s got some good news that is a bit wonky.
One thing the Affordable Care Act did was give subsidies to poorer people. Not just people around or below the poverty line, but also people who make all the way up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line. The federal government has set that level at just above $12,000 for an individual, so 400 percent of that is about $50,000. People who earn more than that in a year are not eligible for Obamacare subsidies.
Now, most people who make more than $50,000 per year get insurance through their employer. But not everyone. And it’s this group of people, who buy on the individual market without a subsidy, that the study focused on.
Here’s where the good news comes in. For this group of people, Rhode Island has, on average, the lowest premiums in the country. A 40-year-old making $50,000 a year in the state would pay just 5 percent of their income for the cheapest plan. Compare that to Wyoming, where that number is more like 14 percent of income. And that’s for the cheapest plan.
One source of Rhode Island’s success? The state got a lot of people to sign up for coverage. Generally, the more people who sign up for coverage, the more likely those additional people are to be healthy. That helps bring premiums down.
That’s according to Zachary Sherman, who runs the state’s insurance exchange, HealthSource RI.
“It helps when everyone has shared responsibility in the cost of the health insurance,” Sherman said. “When everyone’s covered, you have bigger risk pools, and as a result, there isn’t as much price volatility.”
New numbers last week showed Rhode Island’s uninsured rate — the percentage of people who don’t have health insurance — hitting a new low of 3.7 percent.
Read the full report here.
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