With healthcare costs skyrocketing; Idahoans are dropping coverage altogether
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI)– About 25,000 Idahoans may be forced to give up their health insurance as federal subsidies expire, leaving many unable to afford sharply higher premiums.
According to a brief by KFF, those with higher incomes and insurance are not immune to these new, expensive medical costs, and 44% of adults in the U.S. say that it's very or somewhat difficult for them to afford their healthcare costs.
Healthcare agents like Sandi Herrin, owner of Heritage Health Advocates in Idaho Falls, sees this issue firsthand.
"I’ve had more people upset and crying and literally I'm hugging people, trying to walk them through this process as they try to make those decisions. It's something I've never experienced before,” Herrin said, "and there's a trend happening where people are having to make a decision between health care and just cost of daily living, buying groceries, affording housing and paying their rent."
In Idaho, many residents are already planning to drop their health insurance, particularly those under the Affordable Care Act.
According to USA Today, Idaho's insurance enrollment officials fielded a surge of calls and online chats when the state kicked off enrollment on Oct. 15, and state officials project that 25,000 Idaho residents will cancel their health insurance because expiring federal subsidies will make them pay a larger share of the plan's price tag.
One of the most vulnerable groups that may be affected to these ACA cost increases are older, retired Americans.
"The hard part is where you have a population of people who are not yet on Medicare. They're not quite eligible, but they're retired. So they're bringing in maybe Social Security, using their pension to survive and to live. But they've got still think of health care because they're not of Medicare age yet. And so we have to bridge that gap. And usually that's done through the Affordable Care Act,"
As pandemic-era subsidies end, those who earn more than four times the federal poverty level must pay the entire monthly premium to maintain ACA coverage.
