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Intersection: Florida Insurance Rates To Go Up By Nearly 45 Percent In 2018

health-insurance

According to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulations, people buying individual plans on healthcare.gov would see their rates go up nearly 45 percent by 2018.

A 45 percent increase could mean consumers paying more than $200 extra a month on average.

Abe Aboraya, 90.7 Health Reporter, Tony Jenkins, market president of Florida Blue, the largest insurer in Florida, and Mark Bush, director of the Health Management and Informatics program at the University of Central Florida joined Intersection to talk about what an insurance increase would mean for people who are purchasing insurance plans. 

Bush said if people no longer have insurance the amount of uncompensated care for hospitals gets significantly greater.

"Which impacts the amount of money they have available to invest in future technology, and additional staff to take care of the patients that they are seeing," Bush said.

"The uncertainty for them causes some anxiety as well as the insurance companies."

Jenkins said 90 percent of their customers will see a "modest increase" of 10-12 percent because about 75 percent of the people purchasing plans from Florida Blue are subsidy eligible.

"What we've recognized is that because the majority of those folks are in that silver product were they are going to get cost share reductions and they're going to get that premium tax credit," Jenkins said.