Trumpflation hits insurance premiums

That would represent the largest rise in premiums since 2018, and for similar reasons. The year before, President Donald Trump and the majority-Republican Congress came close to repealing the Affordable Care Act of 2010, leading insurers to raise prices amid uncertainty.

Exchange premium hikes in recent years have been much smaller, the KFF study shows. Average rates rose 7% for the 2025 plan year and 6% the year before. Exchange membership reached a record-high 24.3 million in 2025.

During this rate season, exchange insurers anticipate that Trump and the GOP Congress will allow the enhanced premium tax credits in place since 2021 to expire at the end of 2025. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also tightened enrollment rules starting next year.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects these two changes will cause 5.1 million people to become uninsured starting next year. Exchange members who remain are expected to be relatively sicker and costlier to insure.

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Rate requests for 2026 also cite the effects of tariffs on pharmaceuticals, medical devices and other products, spending on glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists for weight loss, provider demands for higher reimbursements, and generally rising healthcare costs as justifications for price increases.

Moreover, the health insurance sector expects exchange enrollment to further diminish, and risk pools to worsen, as provisions from Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” begin to take effect, including $200 billion in exchange spending cuts over a decade.

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BirdinHand said:

The leopards are on the way, I think they’re back ordered.

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Greenbeard said:

History repeats itself. In his first term, Trump took office and immediately started taking actions to deliberately jack up insurance premiums in the ACA marketplaces (Trump causing double digit premium increases). The result was by far the largest jump in marketplace premiums (34%) on record in 2018.

Since that last Trump Bump in premiums, ACA marketplace haven't really risen at all. Average benchmark premiums in the ACA marketplaces in 2025 are only about 3% higher (in nominal dollars, meaning they have fallen substantially in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the average post-Trump Bump 2018 benchmark premium. Economy-wide, of course, prices and wages are quite a bit higher this year than they were in 2018. But marketplace premiums have been flat for seven years.

Marketplace Average Benchmark Premiums


Until now. Trump and the GOP have taken a number of steps that have insurers proposing significant (15%) premium increases for next year.

Worse, of course, is that the GOP's reversal of Biden's enhancements to the ACA premium tax credits (better scaling premiums to people's incomes) mean that the impact on what people actually pay next year will be significantly more, making coverage much less affordable.

Years of recovery from the first Trump administration, with flat premiums and insurers streaming into the marketplaces under Biden, substantially increasing the choices available to buyers (actually exceeding under Biden the average number of competing insurers during the competitive early days of Obamacare, after sharp decreases in competition in the first Trump administration) are now in jeopardy and all but certain to be reversed.

Number of Insurers Participating in the Individual Health Insurance Marketplaces


Once again, thanks to Trump's purposefully disastrous (malevolent) mismanagement, premiums are poised to spike, competition is about to wane, and people are about to feel a significantly harsher pinch from health care costs. Like clockwork.

Exchange premiums may rise the most since 2018



Thanks, Trump and the GOP!

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Greenbeard said:

History repeats itself. In his first term, Trump took office and immediately started taking actions to deliberately jack up insurance premiums in the ACA marketplaces (Trump causing double digit premium increases). The result was by far the largest jump in marketplace premiums (34%) on record in 2018.

Since that last Trump Bump in premiums, ACA marketplace haven't really risen at all. Average benchmark premiums in the ACA marketplaces in 2025 are only about 3% higher (in nominal dollars, meaning they have fallen substantially in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the average post-Trump Bump 2018 benchmark premium. Economy-wide, of course, prices and wages are quite a bit higher this year than they were in 2018. But marketplace premiums have been flat for seven years.

Marketplace Average Benchmark Premiums


Until now. Trump and the GOP have taken a number of steps that have insurers proposing significant (15%) premium increases for next year.

Worse, of course, is that the GOP's reversal of Biden's enhancements to the ACA premium tax credits (better scaling premiums to people's incomes) mean that the impact on what people actually pay next year will be significantly more, making coverage much less affordable.

Years of recovery from the first Trump administration, with flat premiums and insurers streaming into the marketplaces under Biden, substantially increasing the choices available to buyers (actually exceeding under Biden the average number of competing insurers during the competitive early days of Obamacare, after sharp decreases in competition in the first Trump administration) are now in jeopardy and all but certain to be reversed.

Number of Insurers Participating in the Individual Health Insurance Marketplaces


Once again, thanks to Trump's purposefully disastrous (malevolent) mismanagement, premiums are poised to spike, competition is about to wane, and people are about to feel a significantly harsher pinch from health care costs. Like clockwork.

Exchange premiums may rise the most since 2018



Thanks, Trump and the GOP!

Click to expand...

ttwtt78640 said:

The average PPACA premium is well below the Medicare Part B premium, which is predicted to go up by 11.6% from 2025 to 2026.

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Republicans might unwittingly undermine the growing popularity of a first-term Trump policy that encourages Obamacare sign-ups, Kelly reports.

In 2019, the first Trump administration finalized a rule permitting employers to offer their workers a tax credit to purchase health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange in lieu of offering them a group plan. Few employers initially took up the offer, but the high costs and administrative burden that come with providing traditional group plans have lately prompted more companies to adopt the arrangements, health insurance brokers told POLITICO.

Republicans favor the policy, called Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, because it promotes individual choice in health coverage. Democrats don’t mind it either because it bolsters Obamacare. And employers are growing more interested: ICHRA adoption has surged more than 1,000 percent since 2020, according to an HRA Council report.

But major obstacles threaten its course.

Why it matters: Changes to the ACA in Republicans’ recently enacted megabill, the expiration of enhanced federal Obamacare subsidies at year’s end and a new Trump administration marketplace rule could lead to fewer young and healthy people in the ACA market and higher premiums. The blend of federal policies could make offering ICHRAs much less attractive for employers, policy experts said.

“For that to be a viable option for the employer to do, the individual market has to be a sustainable, viable market to send your workers to,” said Cori Uccello, a senior health fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries.

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Greenbeard said:

History repeats itself. In his first term, Trump took office and immediately started taking actions to deliberately jack up insurance premiums in the ACA marketplaces (Trump causing double digit premium increases). The result was by far the largest jump in marketplace premiums (34%) on record in 2018.

Since that last Trump Bump in premiums, ACA marketplace haven't really risen at all. Average benchmark premiums in the ACA marketplaces in 2025 are only about 3% higher (in nominal dollars, meaning they have fallen substantially in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the average post-Trump Bump 2018 benchmark premium. Economy-wide, of course, prices and wages are quite a bit higher this year than they were in 2018. But marketplace premiums have been flat for seven years.

Marketplace Average Benchmark Premiums


Until now. Trump and the GOP have taken a number of steps that have insurers proposing significant (15%) premium increases for next year.

Worse, of course, is that the GOP's reversal of Biden's enhancements to the ACA premium tax credits (better scaling premiums to people's incomes) mean that the impact on what people actually pay next year will be significantly more, making coverage much less affordable.

Years of recovery from the first Trump administration, with flat premiums and insurers streaming into the marketplaces under Biden, substantially increasing the choices available to buyers (actually exceeding under Biden the average number of competing insurers during the competitive early days of Obamacare, after sharp decreases in competition in the first Trump administration) are now in jeopardy and all but certain to be reversed.

Number of Insurers Participating in the Individual Health Insurance Marketplaces


Once again, thanks to Trump's purposefully disastrous (malevolent) mismanagement, premiums are poised to spike, competition is about to wane, and people are about to feel a significantly harsher pinch from health care costs. Like clockwork.

Exchange premiums may rise the most since 2018



Thanks, Trump and the GOP!

Click to expand...