Higher premiums would cancel out some people's tax cuts

Data: The Commonwealth Fund; Chart: Lazaro Gamio / Axios

The Senate's proposed tax overhaul would repeal the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate permanently, and provide individual tax cuts temporarily. Once those tax cuts expire, just about everyone on the individual insurance market will face higher health insurance costs without a tax cut to help pay for it. And even in the short term, some people's tax cuts would effectively be erased by the higher premiums they'd face without the individual mandate. Threat level: As my colleague Caitlin Owens reports this morning, based on an analysis from the Commonwealth Fund, the biggest burden here would fall on people who buy insurance on their own, but don't get subsidies to help cover their premiums. Those subsidies help insulate low-income consumers from premium hikes, but the people who don't get them will be on the hook for all of the added costs that come with repealing the individual mandate — and that would eat up a lot of the extra money they'd be keeping because of the bill's tax cuts. Many families can't afford even moderate deductibles Reproduced from Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finance; Note: Liquid assets include the sum of checking and saving accounts, money market accounts, certificates of deposit, savings bonds, non-retirement mutual funds, stocks and bonds; Chart: Axios Visuals   A lot of low-income families can't afford even a moderate deductible, yet deductibles continue to rise in almost all forms of insurance, Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman writes in his latest Axios column. Roughly 40% of all non-elderly households don't have enough liquid assets to cover a high deductible ($3,000 for an individual or $6,000 for a family). Among families whose income makes them eligible for the ACA's premium subsidies, 60% don't have enough liquid assets to cover a high deductible and 44% couldn't cover the deductible for a mid-range plan ($1,500 for an individual or $3,000 for a family). Why it matters: High deductibles are everywhere, and they're only getting higher. Many ACA plans have relatively big deductibles and Republicans' alternatives would push them higher. They've been getting bigger and bigger in employer plans, too. "For many families, even if they have insurance, any significant illness could wipe out all their savings, making impossible to fix a broken car to get to work, or pay for school, or make a rent or mortgage payment," Altman says. Source:Axios

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