Insurers may not actually enact some of the biggest Obamacare premium hikes they’re proposing for 2016, a top Obama administration official said Thursday morning.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell responded to some of the largest rate increases announced earlier this week by noting that the rates aren’t final, but preliminary. Insurers might also feel enough public pressure to forgo the rate increases voluntarily, simply by making the increases public, she said.
“Last year what we saw is those rates came out, and in the end, they were lower after states did their review,” Burwell said at a breakfast hosted by the Wall Street Journal.
The healthcare law requires insurers to publicize it if they want to raise premiums by 10 percent or more, although the government isn’t able to block big hikes.
As in years past, insurers are all across the board in pricing plans for next year. Some have proposed lowering rates, while others want to raise them. A number have suggested rate increases as high as 70 percent, and Republicans have argued those increases show Obamacare is making insurance more expensive.
Obamacare premiums are something the administration is “always” going to watch, Burwell said. But she also said people often focus on premiums over other elements of health plans such as deductibles or copays, which also figure into a consumer’s bottom-line cost.
