Increasing deductibles?

[stpioc]

With all the fuss about Obamacare, consider the following figure:



Sure many would instantly point the finger at Obamacare, until you realize the following. 

About 11 million people are enrolled in the marketplaces. More than 13 times that many, around 150 million, have coverage through employers, and there are 66 million people in Medicaid and 55 million in Medicare.

UnitedHealth leaving the next scare story

We might also provide a bit of the article that accompanies the figure:

While the political world focuses on the Affordable Care Act, changes have been occurring for the many more Americans who get health insurance through work. The biggest change: rising deductibles, which are transforming the nature of health insurance from more comprehensive coverage to skimpier insurance with higher out-of-pocket costs. This change has happened gradually and has not been the subject of a big legislative debate, as the Affordable Care Act was.

The shift is not a result of Obamacare; the trend began well before the ACA was passed in 2010. The trend is not highly politicized or covered daily by the general news media. All of which contribute to making the changing nature of insurance the most important development in the U.S. health system the public is not debating.

For 18 years, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust have done an annual survey of employer health benefits. This year it found that deductibles rose 12% in 2016 in the group market and four times faster than premiums increased. For context, 150 million Americans get coverage through their employers. The trend toward higher deductibles is especially pronounced among employers with fewer than 200 workers, where 65% of employees are now in high-deductible plans. The average deductible in these firms is $2,000.

The Missing Debate Over Rising Health-Care Deductibles - Washington Wire - WSJ

And to put this into perspective, this has been going on for a long time..

As the chart above shows, payments toward deductibles by consumers who have insurance through large employers rose 256% from 2004 to 2014; over the same period, wages increased 32%.

The Next Big Debate in Health Care - Washington Wire - WSJ

Again, no Obamacare here, the critics of which routinely denounce it for lousy insurance plans with high deductibles, while completely silent on the much longer rise in deductibles in employer based healthcare (which matters for many more people)..