“Millions of Americans are starting to see their monthly health-insurance bills rise, a new pressure point for a nation still frustrated with the high cost of living,” Rachel Louise Ensign writes for The Wall Street Journal. “Many of those facing the most substantial dollar increases are middle-income Americans who buy health insurance through the marketplaces set up by the government’s Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Expanded subsidies for those insured under the A.C.A. expired on Dec. 31—the central battle in last year’s record-long government shutdown. That shutdown ended with no resolution on the subsidies, and lawmakers haven’t passed legislation to revive them. Now, the newly calculated insurance bills are coming due, and Americans are having to figure out how to pay up, or go without. Lenny and Mandee Wilson, who are 47 years old and live in Charleston, W.Va., paid $255 a month last year for a low-end A.C.A. plan. Late last year, they learned their bill would be going up to $2,155 a month, a sum nearly triple their monthly mortgage payment of about $760. … People who earn just above the 400% [of the federal poverty line] threshold and are older or living in certain states like West Virginia with higher healthcare costs are facing the biggest price jumps, said Louise Norris, a health-policy analyst for healthinsurance.org, a site affiliated with an agency that sells A.C.A. plans. Some increases are extreme. A hypothetical married couple of 63-year-olds living in Cheyenne, Wyo., making $85,000 a year, putting them right above the 400% threshold, would go from paying nothing for a low-end A.C.A. plan to $3,417 a month, an amount that is about half of their total pretax income, according to an analysis from Norris.” Rachel Louise Ensign, “Health insurance is now more expensive than the mortgage for these Americans,” The Wall Street Journal (gift link).
