Price Hikes Put Health Insurance Shoppers Into Difficult Choices

Margaret Leatherwood has eight choices for health insurance next year but no good options.

The cheapest individual coverage available in her market would eat up nearly a quarter of the income her husband brings home from the oilfields.

The Bryson, Texas, couple makes too much to qualify for Affordable Care Act tax credits that help people buy coverage. But they don't make enough to comfortably afford insurance on their own, even though Paul Leatherwood works seven days a week.

"I hate to put it like this, but it sucks," said Margaret Leatherwood, who stays at home and takes care of her grandchildren.

This largely middle-class crowd of shoppers is struggling to stay insured. They've weathered years of price hikes and shrinking insurance choices with no help. Faced with more price increases for next year, they're mulling options outside insurance or skipping coverage entirely - a decision that could lead to a fine for remaining uninsured and huge bills if an emergency hits.

The sign-up period for 2018 coverage closes on Friday in most states, meaning shoppers have only a few more days to find something that squeezes into their budgets.

"I kind of cringe when I am meeting with those clients because I don't have a solution for them," said Kelly Rector, a Missouri-based insurance agent.

The ACA helped chop the uninsured population 41 percent to 28.8 million people earlier this year from 48.6 million in 2010, when it became law, according to government figures.

The law expanded Medicaid coverage for the poor and created health insurance marketplaces where people can use income-based tax credits to buy an insurance plan if they don't get coverage through work. Those subsidies cover part or all of the bill, capping insurance costs at a percentage of income for those who are eligible. That shields recipients from price hikes of 20 percent or more that have hit many markets.

But that help stops abruptly for people making four times the federal poverty level or more - around $48,000 for an individual and more than $98,000 for a family of four.

Of the roughly 15 million people who bought ACA-compliant individual insurance for this year, nearly 7 million had no tax credit help, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Meanwhile, the uninsured rate among adults who make too much to qualify for help buying coverage jumped to 5 percent this year from 2 percent in 2016, according to The Commonwealth Fund.

Brokers and health care researchers expect that to climb again, especially for people with income levels close to the cutoff for federal help.

"It's not going to be like an on-off switch where prices get too high and nobody buys coverage," said Sherry Glied of New York University. "It's more like a drip, drip, drip."

The vulnerable population includes the self-employed, small business owners and those close to qualifying for the Medicare program that covers people age 65 and over.

These customers can face monthly bills that climb past $2,000 for a family plan and then a big deductible before most coverage starts. Plus fewer markets this year have insurance that comes with a health savings account, which lets people save for medical expenses before taxes. Those accounts are popular with individual insurance shoppers who don't get tax credit help, said St. Louis broker Emily Bremer.