[USATODAY] Federal regulators opened the federal exchange Healthcare.gov for consumers to browse for plans on Monday, as they announced that rates will be up 25% for the plans for which the tax subsidies are calculated.The Department of Health and Human Services also warned that more than one in five consumers using the site will only have one insurer from which to choose coverage.
As concerns grow about much higher rates in many states, officials emphasized that the vast majority of people shopping on Healthcare.gov will pay less than $100 a month for premiums when tax credits are included. More than 70% of people will pay less than $75 a month after tax credits.
Healthcare.gov handles individual insurance sales for those who live in the 38 states that don't have their own exchanges.
The second lowest cost silver plan on the exchanges is the benchmark plan that regulators base tax credits on. That's the rate that is up 25%, which is also the expected overall increase in 2017.
"This is a big increase in an environment where health care cost growth is generally modest and incomes aren’t growing much at all," says Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. "The increase is largely a reflection of insurers catching up to the fact that the number of sick people signing up for insurance is bigger than expected."