CBO: Health Reform will Increase Value (and no segment will personally pay higher premiums)

The Congressional Budget Office has weighed in on the impact of the Senate health care bill on insurance premiums.  It's highly likely that opponents will latch on to 10-13% increases projected for health insurance premiums for those in the nongroup market (17% of the population).  However, as Ezra Klein notes on the Washington Post blog, this is a "steal." In fact, the cost is up a bit - but these are credible insurance plans of 27-30% greater actuarial value. Furthermore, more than half of those in the nongroup market will receive subsidies, so their cost of having insurance will effectively drop by more than half.  The CBO projects no change to a tiny decrease in cost of premiums for the small and large group market. For both the small and nongroup market, the CBO projects that the SAME policy would cost between 1-10% less.

All told - this is a solid double for the health care reform plan. However, we'll see how this gets interpreted by the talking heads.