Families USA: PPACA to Slash Non-Group Costs

September 28, 2012 at 10:12 AM
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Families USA, one of the groups that helped shape the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), says families with non-group commercial health insurance could spend about twice as much on health care if Mitt Romney becomes president.

Families with heads of household under age 65 that use commercial individual or commercial family coverage could spend an average of $5,985 per household per year on health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses in 2016 if the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) takes effect as written and works as drafters expect, the analysts have reported in a new commentary.

If Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, becomes president and gets his current health policy proposals enacted, the average cost for families that use non-group coverage could be $11,481, the analysts said.

Average household spending under PPACA could range from $3,827 in West Virginia to $8,710 in Connecticut, the analysts predicted.

Under the Romney proposals, the analysts said, the average could range from $6,952 in West Virginia to $15,178 in Alaska.

Families USA has published the table giving those figures in a commentary that shows how the analysts think PPACA and Romney policy proposals would affect a variety of health care access indicators.

Families USA bills itself as a "nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)4 organization that [does] not endorse, support, or oppose political candidates."

The group does say it has the mission of achieving "high-quality, affordable health coverage and care for all Americans," and it played an important role in developing PPACA and shaping regulators' efforts to implement the law.

The analyst who developed the health care spending table, Jonathan Gruber, is an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who helped develop the health policy law Romney signed into law in Massachusetts in 2006. Gruber also helped policymakers develop PPACA.

Families USA does not show in the report how Gruber came up with the 2016 cost projections.

In the commentary, the FamiliesUSA analysts dub the current Romney proposals "RomneyCandidateCare."

Romney has said that he wants to repeal PPACA. The analysts noted that Romney seems to have said that he wants to find ways to achieve some of the goals in PPACA, such as preventing discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions who had insurance when they became ill.

Romney also seems to support letting insured people keep young adult dependents on their coverage and consumer access to quality rankings, the analysts said.

The analysts have concluded that "RomneyCandidateCare" would lead to an enormous change in the direction of health care in the United States.

"Especially in terms of cost and coverage, RomneyCandidateCare would place a growing and unsustainable burden on America's families," the analysts said. "That burden would make health coverage and care unaffordable for a huge portion of our nation's middle-class and moderate-income families, thereby resulting in more and more people joining the ranks of the uninsured."

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