President Obama and other supporters of the Affordable Care Act are trying to push back on headlines that have been raising alarms about sharp premium increases coming for ACA marketplace plans.

The president has pointed out that the great majority of marketplace customers, who are already eligible for subsidies to cover the cost of their plans, will be insulated from the effect of premium increases.

As previous analyses have highlighted, only about 1.5 million of marketplace customers do not qualify for any type of subsidy. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, for instance, a 40-year-old making $30,000 a year will pay roughly the same price for the second-cheapest silver plan in all but two states.

However, a new analysis suggests as many as 8.4 million Americans will see their premiums go up as a result of the ACA price changes. That’s because of the roughly 6.9 million people who buy insurance directly through insurers, rather than through the ACA marketplace, will likely also be seeing premium increases that are shaped by the Obamacare business, the Wall Street Journal reports.

At the very least, that suggests that Obama has been understating the effect of the premium hikes on the overall insurance market. At a rally in Florida recently, he described premiums as going up for a “handful of people who don’t get tax credits.”

Misinformation has certainly been lobbed from the other end of the spectrum as well, most notably by Donald Trump, who alleged earlier this year that the Obama administration was preventing the 2017 premium rates from being published before the election. The existence of articles such as this one, of course, disprove that.

The future of the ACA also hinges largely on the result of the election on Tuesday. Trump has vowed to scrap the law, while Clinton has said she will work to expand it, including by pushing for a public option.

Instant Insights /

ACA premiums could increase for as many as 8.4 million

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