Those High Obamacare Deductibles Aren’t So High After All

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Republicans have been griping for years about the “worthless” health insurance provided by Obamacare. Why worthless? Because the deductibles are so high.

This takes some serious chutzpah, since high-deductible insurance has been a favorite Republican meme for decades. Practically every Republican health care proposal is based on some combination of high-deductible plans and health savings accounts, and Trumpcare is no exception. Under Trumpcare, average deductibles would increase considerably and HSAs would double in value. The only reason you haven’t heard about this is because Republicans have kept pretty quiet about it. You see, conservatives love it, but voters don’t. They just want health insurance to pay the damn bills.

But shameless or not, it’s still true that many people on the Obamacare exchanges buy plans with deductibles of $3,000 or more. That’s a drag. Of course, before Obamacare lots of people with individual insurance bought plans with high deductibles too. So what we really want to know is whether this changed when Obamacare went into effect. Here are the latest numbers from the CDC:

Among those with individual insurance, high-deductible plans have stayed dead level since Obamacare took effect. It’s had zero effect on the number of people who choose to buy less expensive plans with higher deductibles.

On the other hand, employer plans have been getting steadily crummier the entire time, and once again this has nothing to do with Obamacare. Deductibles have gone up solely because large companies have chosen to pare down their health coverage even though corporate profits are at an all-time high.

This is just the latest in a long list of Obamacare disasters that have turned out not to be. It didn’t send the cost of health care skyrocketing. Obamacare didn’t destroy part-time jobs. It’s not in a death spiral. Premiums haven’t been higher than originally projected. And now we know that it’s had no effect on deductibles either.

Obamacare does have a few real problems. They are generally small and technical, and could be fixed very easily. But fixing Obamacare wouldn’t provide a big tax cut for the rich, so Republicans aren’t interested. That’s all you need to know about why they hate it so much.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate