Report: Obamacare will save families $9,000 compared to Romney plans

Despite public assumptions that recent health insurance increases are the fault of the Affordable Care Act, a new report just released by Families USA, finds that Michigan families would pay nearly three times as much under Romneycare – the 2012 version – than under Obamacare.

Families USA, a nonprofit research group that advocates for health care consumers, concluded that families purchasing health care insurance on their own would pay an average of $14,200 per year under Mitt Romney’s proposals in 2016, compared to $5,403 under the existing plan formulated by President Obama. The 2016 benchmark represents two years after Obamacare is fully phased in and consumer choices would start to take hold.

Obviously, the huge gap between the two plans surfaces over time because Obamacare will offer tax subsidies to millions of Americans to help them afford coverage. Romney has said repeatedly that he would immediately repeal Obamacare – though earlier this week he took a big turn and said he would keep parts of the plan.

The cost figures compiled by Families USA include comparative insurance premium payments as well as out-of-pocket costs (such as deductibles and co-payments) paid by families in Michigan. The report also calculated that 1.3 million more Michiganders would be uninsured under Romney than under Obamacare by 2016 – a number that would grow to 1.6 million by 2022.  
The report reportedly uses never-before-released national and state-by-state data to analyze and compare health care benefits and costs among three different plans: Romneycare (the Massachusetts health law signed by then-governor Mitt Romney in 2006), Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March 2010), and “RomneyCandidateCare,” the health care proposals of presidential candidate Romney.
 

Here are some of the findings:

 * 650,000 middle-class Michiganders would receive tax credit subsidies to help pay for insurance premiums under Obamacare in 2016.
* The average size of those tax credit subsidies under Obamacare would be $4,674 in 2016.

* Obamacare reduces the number of uninsured in 2016 by 890,000, but RomneyCandidateCare increases the number of uninsured by 370,000 -- a differential of 1.3 million Michiganders. On a national scale, Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured in ’16 by 32.9 million, but RomneyCandidateCare would increase the number by almost 18 million -- a differential of 50.9 million.
 
“Obamacare and the Massachusetts-based Romneycare, on the one hand, and RomneyCandidateCare on the other hand, are as different as day and night,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.