Obamacare carries a premium in Maine
Maine residents opting for midlevel plans on the health insurance marketplace starting Oct. 1 under the federal Affordable Care Act will pay more than most other states, but less than what individuals have paid previously in the state.
The reasons cited for the higher fees are that Maine is a rural state, the population is older and the state lacks insurance competition, according to the Portland Press Herald. The paper published a chart of comparable data with other states.
The newspaper noted that Mainers who enroll in the marketplace will pay $403 a month on average for midlevel plans. That’s before tax credits potentially lower the cost, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report released Wednesday. That ties Maine with Indiana as having the sixth-highest rate out of 47 states and the District of Columbia. The Press Herald said data for all states was not available, but the national average was $328 monthly. Plan coverage is set to start Jan. 1.
Still, health experts told the newspaper that even the most expensive premiums will be less than the premiums for the most common individual plans available to date in Maine.
“One of the most common insurance plans was the ... $15,000 deductible, catastrophic plan. That wasn’t really health insurance. That was just protecting someone from losing their house under the weight of bills,” Wendy Wolf, president and CEO of the Augusta-based Maine Health Access Foundation, told the newspaper.
Some plans with $15,000 deductibles cost several hundred dollars a month, according to data from the Maine Bureau of Insurance cited by the paper. Under the Affordable Care Act, co-payments and deductibles in individual policies will be limited to $6,350 a year.
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