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ECONOMIC REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

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projected during the debate over the ACA (CBO 2014), and analysts<br />

have estimated that premiums remained between 12 percent and 20<br />

percent below CBO’s initial projections in 2016, depending on the<br />

methodology used (Levitt, Cox, and Claxton 2016; Adler and Ginsburg<br />

2016). The 2017 increases are therefore taking Marketplace premiums<br />

back to their originally expected trajectory, consistent with the view that<br />

these increases are a one-time correction, not an indication of underlying<br />

problems in the individual market.<br />

Implications of 2017 Premium Changes for the Future of the<br />

Individual Market<br />

By bringing insurers’ premium revenue back in line with their<br />

claims costs, the premium increases being implemented for 2017 help<br />

create the conditions for a more stable market in the years ahead.<br />

However, some analysts and commentators have taken a more negative<br />

view. They argue that premium increases will drive large reductions in<br />

individual market enrollment, particularly among healthy individuals.<br />

This decline in enrollment among the healthy, they argue, will increase<br />

average medical costs in the individual market, triggering further premium<br />

increases and enrollment reductions. Some observers have even<br />

speculated this feedback loop between higher premiums and falling<br />

enrollment will become so intense that it will cause a “death spiral,” a<br />

scenario in which enrollment in the individual market ultimately falls<br />

nearly to zero. Some of these observers have further suggested that the<br />

premium increases seen for 2017 are evidence that this type of vicious<br />

cycle has already begun.<br />

In fact, there is no evidence that a death spiral is underway. The<br />

defining feature of a death spiral is declining enrollment, particularly<br />

among the healthy, resulting in a deteriorating risk pool. In fact, the<br />

exact opposite is occurring. Marketplace enrollment has grown every<br />

year since the Marketplace opened in 2014, and enrollment in the individual<br />

market as a whole was estimated to be around 18 million in early<br />

2016, up from around 11 million in 2013 (ASPE 2016a). Furthermore,<br />

it appears that the average individual market enrollee is actually getting<br />

healthier over time. Using data on medical spending in the individual<br />

market submitted by insurers as part of the ACA’s transitional reinsurance<br />

program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)<br />

estimate that nominal per member per month medical spending fell<br />

slightly from 2014 to 2015, and an outside analysis of a private claims<br />

database supports a similar conclusion (CMS 2016a; Avalere Health<br />

2016). Due to the underlying upward trend in medical costs, per member<br />

per month spending would have been expected to increase if the average<br />

Reforming the Health Care System | 217

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