States are using Obamacare waivers to reduce premiums. Doug Badger writes:
Average premiums for benchmark plans—exchange-based policies whose rates are used to compute federal premium subsidies—were 76 percent higher in 2018 than in 2014. That trend did not continue in 2019, when premiums for benchmark plans fell by 0.83 percent, the first such decline recorded.
That result defied forecasts of double-digit premium increases, which many analysts predicted would result from repeal of tax penalties on the uninsured and liberalization of federal rules governing short-term, limited duration policies. The Congressional Budget Office, for example, projected that 2019 premiums would rise by an average of 16 percent as a result of those and other changes.
The standard explanation for why these predictions proved erroneous is that insurers “overshot” their rate hikes in 2018 and adjusted them downward in 2019. While broadly correct, this masks another critical factor. […]
[P]remiums declined significantly in the seven states that obtained federal waivers to operate risk-stabilization programs (median reduction of 7.48 percent), and increased in the 44 states and the District of Columbia that did not have such waivers in place (median increase of 3.09 percent).
[Doug Badger, “How Health Care Premiums Are Declining in States that Seek Relief from Obamacare’s Mandates,” The Heritage Foundation, August 13]
