Insurers added surcharges of between 7 and 38 percent onto Obamacare silver plans because of President Donald Trump's threats to kill reimbursement payments to health plans. Many customers will be shielded from the higher prices. But nonsubsidized customers could get hit with the full of effect of the raised premiums. Insurers slapped surcharges of anywhere from 7 to 38 percent onto premiums for Obamacare's most popular type of plans because of threats for months by President Donald Trump to end reimbursement payments to insurers, a new report says. But many customers will be shielded from those price hikes, the Kaiser Family Foundation report noted. That's because they either will receive higher federal subsidies that offset rising Obamacare premiums, or will opt for other types of plansthat are not subject to the surcharges in a number of states. In fact, another new analysis, from consulting firm Oliver Wyman, notes that there will be more Obamacare customers in 2018 who will personally pay no money at all for their premiums because their federal subsidies will be higher than the cost of their plans. However, some customers will get hit with the full effect of the price hikes identified by Kaiser. The analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation comes days before Wednesday's start of open enrollment in Obamacare plans. And it comes two weeks after Trump followed through on his threats to cease the crucial cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers, who had anticipated the risk of that with higher prices for next year. Kaiser's report is focused on how insurers raised prices of silver Obamacare plans above what they otherwise would have charged to account for the loss of billions of dollars in those payments. The payments had compensated them for discounts given to low-income customers for their out-of-pocket health costs, including deductibles, copayments and coinsurance. Silver plans, which cover about 70 percent of their customers' medical costs, are the plans of choice for more than 7 out of every 10 Obamacare customers on government-run marketplaces. Silver plans are also the only types of plans where lower-income Obamacare customers can obtain the cost-sharing discounts if they enroll on a government exchange. Those discounts must continue to be granted by law, despite Trump's decision to cease compensating insurers for their cost. Because of those two facts, many insurers, in order to account for the potential loss of the payments, loaded their higher premium rates only onto silver plans, and not onto other tiers of Obamacare plans. That had the effect of shielding most of the customers from the price hikes because the vast majority of silver plan customers get premium subsidies that will increase to cover the higher prices. On the low end were several insurers in Oregon that each added a 7.1 percent surcharge on their silver plans. However, those extra charges were added both to plans sold on government exchanges and outside of those marketplaces. People who buy coverage outside of the exchanges do not get federal subsidies to lower their monthly premiums. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/27/oba...p-to-38-percent-because-of-trump-threats.html