US Health-Care Premiums Set to Rise

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00:00So, Caitlin, you spoke with a bunch of small business owners. What are they telling you in

00:04terms of the frustrations with the increased premiums? Well, they're really worried. They're

00:11worried for a couple of reasons. First, a lot of their employees are on these exchanges, and so

00:16they're worried about their ability to compete with smaller firms if this affordable source of

00:21health care goes away. And they're also worried about their own personal health care costs. The

00:27small business owners I spoke to were saying that they were thinking about cutting other employees

00:33hours so that they could pick up more shifts themselves or, in some cases, shutting up shop

00:38entirely so that they could seek out other work at an employer that provides health insurance.

00:45And part of this, of course, and it goes right back to what the shutdown was about, was these

00:49tax credits that expired or are expiring and that the Republicans did not want to extend,

00:54that the Democrats wanted to extend and thus resulted in the shutdown. What happens if they

00:59permanently lose these tax credits and can't buy the health care insurance plants on the exchanges?

01:07Well, we're going to see a lot of people lose health insurance entirely when they can't afford

01:14the premium costs. We know that Senate Republicans have promised Democrats a vote on this in December,

01:21but it leaves these subsidies on very shaky ground because a group of Democrats cut a deal with

01:27Republicans to reopen the government without including a solution for this. And so it's

01:33leaving people in a very uncertain position. Yeah, I could see how that is. Can you just give me an

01:40example of some of the folks who you spoke with and what they said, particularly folks with

01:45pre-existing conditions who really didn't have an option to purchase health insurance before

01:51the Affordable Care Act came along? Yeah, absolutely. I spoke to one small business owner based in

01:57Nebraska. She owns a restaurant and catering company. She said that before the subsidies,

02:03the enhanced subsidies went into place in 2021, she went without health care for years and is looking

02:10at that prospect. Again, she's balancing a lot of different costs and demands, including, you know,

02:17rising input costs for her business as she's been hit with tariffs. And so this is just another hit to a

02:25sector that has small margins. And they're really worried about what happens next year when these

02:32enhanced subsidies go away.