For many people buying health care on the exchanges of the Affordable Care Act, premiums are higher than they should be, despite tax credits that this year, according to state tax data, totaled $32.8 billion.
But according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, things will get a lot harder for those whose health insurance comes from the marketplaces if the ACA is repealed, because that $32.8 billion in tax credits will go away.
Those who would lose the tax credits are those with household incomes between 100–400 percent of the federal poverty level who qualify for Advanced Premium Tax Credits (APTCs) under the ACA to get help paying for insurance plans bought through the ACA’s marketplaces.
According to the Kaiser Foundation, consumers who qualify for APTCs may choose how much of the tax credit to apply to their premiums each month, up to the maximum amount for which they are eligible.
The amount of APTC an enrollee may receive depends on household income and the cost of the second-lowest-cost silver plan available to enrollees in their local area.
If the ACA is repealed, as the new administration has said it intends, those subsidies would disappear.
The foundation said that the data include estimates of the total amount of tax credits received in each state for 2016, based on the average tax credit per person and the number of ACA marketplace enrollees receiving tax credits as of March 31.
A total of 9,389,609 people across the U.S. receive advanced premium tax credits as of March 31, at an average amount per month of $291.00.
In several states, tax credits received by residents who purchase through exchanges total in the billions of dollars; California residents, for instance, receive a total of $4,597,523,000 while Florida residents get $5,229,086,000 and Texas residents $2,969,652,000.
Alaska and Wyoming residents receive the highest average subsidies, at $750 and $459, respectively.
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