Hospitals have already experienced Obamacare taper, analyst says
Increased premiums and less help for insurance companies are setting up to make 2017 quite a different year for the Affordable Care Act, Capitol Street health care analyst Ipsita Smolinksi told CNBC on Tuesday.
In fact, the ripple effects are already being felt.
"The hospitals have already experienced a bit of a taper from the ACA as far as volumes," she said in an interview with "Closing Bell."
The average premium in 2017 is set to rise by an average 25 percent in the 39 states served by the federal Obamacare marketplace.
The numbers vary from state to state. While New Hampshire will see a 2 percent increase, Arizona's hike is a whopping 116 percent.
About 85 percent of enrollees have some type of government subsidy to help offset the costs, Smolinski said.
She said insurance companies found that insuring people with chronic illnesses was very, very expensive.
"Some people were even coming into marketplace, getting surgery or rehab and exiting the market without paying premiums for the rest of the year," she said.
And now the insurers are also losing all but one premium stabilization program in 2017, Smolinski pointed out. Those programs help out companies in the red with additional dollars.
Aetna, UnitedHealth and Humana have all decided to pull back from Obamacare markets next year due to financial losses from the individual health plans.
Smolinski said there are some good fixes that could happen that could make it a much more attractive market, but believes it could take years to accomplish.
That said, she thinks health care will be a "back-burner" issue next year when a new occupant moves into the White House.
"You've got trade, you've got immigration, the economy," she said.
However, if Hillary Clinton wins, she will likely work behind the scenes on a number of things like the exchanges and drug prices, said Smolinski. Clinton also wants to work on expanding Medicaid to the 19 holdout states, she added.
— CNBC's Dan Mangan contributed to this report.