Presently, an estimated 176 million individuals are covered under the Affordable Care Act. With President Trump’s continued promise to “repeal and replace” it, there have been a multitude of reports regarding the 26 million insured through the marketplace that will lose their healthcare. But what hasn’t been discussed is the impact that repealing ACA will have on employers and its covered employees.

The act mandated that every individual have health insurance coverage. Because of this mandate, insurance companies can balance their risks of insuring pre-existing conditions by also insuring the young and healthy, spreading the costs of insurance across both the sick and healthy. By covering such a large swath of Americans, the ACA reduces the costs of uncompensated care, thus reducing the costs that are passed onto all healthcare consumers, regardless of whether they find themselves purchasing coverage on an ACA-affiliated exchange. With the individual mandate requiring every individual to have health insurance likely being repealed, the costs of insurance will increase, causing an increase in premiums to employers. Already, the instability over the potential repeal has caused insurance rates to rise by 20 percent, even though the costs of healthcare have only increased by 5 percent. Many insurers—who must decide on their participation in the marketplace for 2018 by the late spring of 2017—will likely leave the market, and those who stay will need to balance the risk with higher costs to its customers. This increase in premiums will be borne by employers and employees alike.

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