Study: Obamacare's Negative Effect on Ohio

The Heritage Foundation's health policy blog has posted a summary of a new study on creating an Obamacare insurance “exchange,” prepared for the Ohio Department of Insurance by the independent consulting firm Milliman, Inc. The firm used economic modeling to project the effects of the new federal health care law in Ohio.

It shows that residents will move out of existing health insurance coverage to government programs including Medicaid, and that insurance premiums will increase.

Specifically, enrollment in taxpayer-funded, public health care programs will increase by more than 1 million, or 53 percent, and more than half of these will be people who had non-government coverage before the law went into effect.

Premiums for employers or individuals who still have private coverage will also increase, “by 3 percent to 5 percent in the large group insurance market, 5 percent to 15 percent in the small group market, and a whopping 55 percent to 85 percent in the individual market;” this “on top of on top of customary growth due to medical inflation.”

The study is of interest here because Ohio and Michigan are similar in many ways, including population. The full study is here.

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