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Your Health Insurance Bill Goes Up Again on Nov. 1. Congress Let It Happen Twice. · Burn the Playbook with Michael Starr Hopkins

• 0:00
  Three-hundred-and-sixteen dollars a month, then a proposed five-hundred-and-forty-six for the same Anthem Silver plan.
• 0:06
  Those are KFF's calculations for a forty-year-old in Indianapolis, comparing twenty-twenty-five with twenty-twenty-seven. Congress had a chance to restore help with that bill.
• 0:16
  It's October twenty-ninth, twenty-twenty-six. Open enrollment begins Sunday. The prices families are about to compare reflect rising medical costs and a decision in Washington.
• 0:26
  On January eighth, Speaker Mike Johnson refused to schedule a vote on extending enhanced premium tax credits. A discharge petition forced the vote anyway. The credits had expired eight days earlier on New Year's Eve.
• 0:38
  The House passed a three-year extension two-hundred-and-thirty to one-hundred-and-ninety-six. Every Democrat and seventeen Republicans voted yes. The Senate had rejected a clean three-year extension the previous month.
• 0:50
  A bipartisan two-year proposal went nowhere. The House bill never cleared the Senate. The House sent the Senate a way to lower the bill. The Senate left families to work on their budgeting skills.
• 1:00
  Medical costs were also rising about ten percent a year.
• 1:03
  Congress did not cause every dollar of the increase, but insurers attributed roughly four percentage points of this year's rates to the loss of the credits as healthier people left the market.
• 1:13
  They expected another four points for twenty-twenty-seven. Benchmark Silver premiums rose an average of twenty-six percent this year.
• 1:20
  Subsidized enrollees paid an average of a hundred-fourteen percent more to keep the same plan.
• 1:26
  KFF reviewed next year's filings from two-hundred-and-seventy-six insurers across all fifty states and the District of Columbia. The median proposed increase was fifteen percent.
• 1:35
  Fifty-one insurers sought more than twenty-five percent. Those were requests, not final prices. Last year's median request was eighteen percent. The final figure reached twenty.
• 1:46
  If the new requests held, premiums would rise by more than a third over two years. KFF's Indianapolis example calculates costs for a forty-year-old with sixty-five thousand dollars in income on an Anthem Silver plan.
• 1:58
  The monthly calculation goes from three-hundred-and-sixteen dollars to four-hundred-and-seventy-seven this year, with five-hundred-and-forty-six proposed for next year.
• 2:06
  That proposed price is two-hundred-and-thirty dollars more a month than in twenty-twenty-five or two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-sixty dollars a year for the same coverage. Subsidies still helped most enrollees.
• 2:17
  Eighty-seven percent received one this year. But assistance follows the benchmark Silver plan. Above four-hundred percent of the poverty line, the subsidy cliff can leave someone paying the full premium.
• 2:28
  Choosing a plan above the benchmark can also leave more of the increase with the enrollee. Next comes the cost of leaving.
• 2:35
  Marketplace enrollment fell from twenty-two-point-one million in twenty-twenty-five to nineteen-point-two million in February, a thirteen percent drop. Average payments after subsidies rose fifty-eight percent.
• 2:47
  As people moved toward Bronze plans, deductibles rose by more than a thousand dollars per person.
• 2:52
  People between four hundred and five hundred percent of the poverty line made up three percent of the previous year's sign-ups, but twenty-seven percent of the decline.
• 3:00
  A KFF survey found nine percent of last year's enrollees had become uninsured. The administration attributed the enrollment decline to fraud cleanup. KFF tied it to higher prices.
• 3:11
  The loss of healthier customers also raised the cost of covering those who remained. Finally, what could a family do at enrollment?
• 3:18
  The announced window ran from November first through January fifteenth, with December fifteenth the deadline to select coverage starting January first.
• 3:26
  Shoppers could use healthcare.gov or their state marketplace, update their projected income, and compare plans instead of automatically renewing.
• 3:34
  Because subsidies follow the benchmark, the best-priced option could change. The insurer's rate filing was available through ratereview.healthcare.gov. Shopping may reduce the damage.
• 3:45
  It cannot pass the bill the Senate left unfinished. Senators should answer why the House extension never became law. A family can change its plan.
• 3:53
  It should not have to lose its insurance to make Congress notice the price. Subscribe free at burn the playbook dot news for the reporting and next update. [upbeat music]