Before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act took effect, individual health insurance premiums grew rapidly, although costs varied across different states and health plans, according to a report from The Commonwealth Fund.
Jonathan Gruber, PhD, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, analyzed data collected by the National Opinion Research Center to analyze individual health insurance premium trends from 2008 to 2010. He found that from 2008 to 2010, individual plan premiums grew by 10 percent or more annually. Premiums rose by 9.9 percent on average in 2008, 10.8 percent in 2009 and 11.7 percent in 2010.
Furthermore, there was considerable variation in premium increases across states. Increases varied from 2.8 percent in Iowa to 14.7 percent in Wisconsin in 2008, from 4.1 percent in New Jersey to 20.1 percent in Connecticut in 2009, and from 3 percent in Idaho to 21.8 percent in Nebraska in 2010, according to the report.
"This report provides a baseline for evaluating the effects of the [PPACA] on premium costs and reminds us that before the law, many families buying coverage on their own saw their premiums skyrocket even when their plans didn't adequately cover the care they needed," Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, MD, said in a news release.
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