Republican front-runner Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed, for months, that premiums under the Affordable Care Act are “going up 35, 45, 55 percent.” Trump cherry-picks insurers’ rate increases on the ACA marketplaces. The average premium increase was 8 percent for HealthCare.gov consumers between 2015 and 2016.
That figure, from the Department of Health and Human Services’ April analysis, reflects the fact that 43 percent of returning customers shopped around, choosing a different plan for 2016. A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis estimated that if those with the lowest cost silver plan in 2015 stuck with the same plans — even though in many cases a different plan in 2016 was now the lowest cost — their premiums would have gone up 15 percent on average. That’s still much lower than the figures Trump cites.
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