Salt Lake and Davis counties’ residents are getting a bargain on Obamacare’s online insurance marketplace in comparison to other parts of the country.
The premiums in two-county region are found to be at least half the price paid by the country’s most expensive regions according to an analysis of health exchange insurance prices by Kaiser Health News and NPR.
Obamacare was planned to fill up the last gap in insurance coverage, the gap which was left by the spreading out of employer-sponsored health insurance amidst the income freeze of World War II, and the legislation passed in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” a set of domestic programs that brought health insurance to the poor, older Americans, and the disabled.
The report’s author Jordan Rau observes that the cheapest areas share some characteristics.
Utah is different as it’s dominated by two insurers, Intermountain Healthcare’s SelectHealth and Regence BlueCross BlueShield.
Yet the average monthly premium for an individual plan ($173) outside the exchange emulates just Salt Lake’s price for the lowest-cost silver plan on the exchange.
According to the industry experts Utah’s low rates accounts to the state’s demographics, the youth population, relative health and the influence of Intermountain Healthcare, which has been acclaimed for conveying quality and effective care facilities.
The insurance prices Utah pay aren’t accurately proportionate with their bottom of the barrel spending while beneath normal, they’re not the lowest prices.
The Affordable Care Act has altered dynamics by introducing more competition.
CEO Linn Baker said, the latest health exchange enrollment numbers showing Arches with 21 percent of Utah’s 29,000 exchange enrollees propose the company is in position to succeed.
“Finding ourselves with 21 percent market share on the federally facilitated marketplace, particularly in communities new to insurance, it means we’re on the right track,” Baker said.
To beguile young people, many of Arches’ health plans have no deductible for accidents. Their average subsidy-eligible family saved $330 a month or almost $4,000 a year on premiums.
