“. . . President Donald Trump had inherited an individual health insurance market that was starting to stabilize and decided to break it.”


Back in May, the UPMC Health Plan in Pennsylvania said it would need to increase its health insurance premiums on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace by 8 percent, on average, in 2018.

It was an entirely unremarkable number that would allow the plan to cover the expected increase in health care costs and account for the return of the ACA’s health insurance tax. “For us, our population is starting to stabilize,” Kim Cepullio, president of UPMC commercial products, told me this week.

Then on Monday, UPMC issued a substantial revision. Premiums weren’t going up 8 percent next year after all. Instead, the increase would be 41 percent, on average.

What happened? Click to continue reading. By Dylan Scott 10/18/17.