AHIP says Senate reform plan will double average family’s health costs
The cost of health insurance coverage for the average family will nearly double in the next decade if the U.S. Senate’s health care reform bill is passed, an industry trade group suggests.
An analysis from America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents about 1,300 insurance companies providing health coverage to more than 200 million Americans, further clouds the search for health care reform’s true cost and effect.
AHIP’s analysis, prepared by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, suggests that the yearly cost of health coverage for the average family will balloon to $21,300, if the Senate’s reform bill, proposed by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), becomes law.
Under current law, the cost of health insurance, $12,300 for the average family, would increase to $18,400 annually in 2016, according to the AHIP study.
At the same time, individual coverage will rise from $4,600 now to $6,900 in 2016 under current law.
However, under the Senate’s reform plan, it would rise to $7,900 a year, the AHIP analysis found.
Under reform, the typical family’s policy will cost about $20,700 more between 2010 and 2019 than without reform, according to the analysis.
Scott Mulhauser, a spokesman for Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus’ committee the America’s Health Future Act, told the New York Times that the analysis is “untrue, disingenuous and bought and paid for by the same health insurance companies that have been gouging consumers for too long.”
Mulhauser told the newspaper that the analysis is an attempt at “deception” and “a health insurance company hatchet job.”
Last week, the Congressional Budget Office determined Baucus’ bill would cost $829 billion over the next decade, while covering 94% of all Americans. The non-partisan budget office determined that the bill would actually reduce federal budget deficits by $81 billion over the next decade and would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 29 million, leaving about 25 million uninsured.


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