Obamacare Insurance is ‘Unaffordable’ for 105 Million Americans

Published February 10, 2015 7:30pm ET



Obamacare requires employers to provide “affordable” health insurance to full-time employees, and for the purposes of the law, the word affordable is defined very specifically:

Coverage is deemed to be not “affordable” according to the ACA if the employee’s share of the annual premium for self-only coverage is greater than 9.5 percent of their annual household income.  An employer plan must cover at least 60 percent of total allowed costs to meet the ACA’s minimum value requirement, and offer “substantial” coverage for in-patient hospitalization services or physician services (or both). Employer plans are also required to offer certain preventive care services on a no-cost basis to participants, and a range of additional benefits, such as the age-26 adult dependent coverage requirement and no annual or lifetime limits on essential health benefits.

Given that the authors of Obamacare had a very specific idea in mind for what constitutes affordable insurance, the American Health Policy Institute is out with a new study that asks a very interesting question: Does Obamacare meet its own standards for affordability? The answer is no. Here are a couple of the key findings from AHPI’s study: 

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