As Visits to WA’s Health Exchange Website Spike, Cantwell Urges Immediate Action on Health Care Affordability at Senate Hearing

WASHINGTON, D.C. –As new data showed a significant increase in traffic to the website where Washingtonians buy their own health insurance, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, urged immediate action to reduce costs at a Finance Committee hearing today.
According to data obtained by Sen. Cantwell’s office from the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, visits toWAHealthPlanFinder.comincreased 47% during the first week of open enrollment, and 20% during the second week, compared to the same time periods in 2024.
Last month, Sen. Cantwellreleased a case studyshowing the actual, shocking increase in health premiums for a sample middle-class family purchasing health insurance on the ACA marketplace across all 39 WA counties in real dollars: The average increase across all 39 WA counties is $1,049/month or $12,590/year.
"We only have 13 working days until December 15,"said Sen. Cantwell at the hearing."The question is, what can we do to make sure this constituency group of ours isn't left without insurance -- [which would] then raise everybody else's rate because of uncompensated care?"
Also last month, Sen. Cantwell released a data analysis showing a county-by-county breakdown of where Washingtonians will be hit hardest if Republicans continue to refuse to negotiate an extension of the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits. According to the data, there are seven counties where the average health insurance premium is set to more than double next year assuming the Enhanced Premium Tax Credit is allowed to lapse. All seven of these hardest-hit counties are in rural regions east of the Cascades: Yakima, Grant, Adams, Franklin, Douglas, Chelan, and Ferry counties. A one-pager on the data can be viewedHERE.
At today’s Finance Committeehearing, titled “The Rising Cost of Health Care: Considering Meaningful Solutions for all Americans,” Sen. Cantwell touted the cost savings potential of the Basic Health Program, an option through the Affordable Care Act that empowers states to use federal funding to negotiate directly with managed care plans – essentially a state-based public health insurance option for individuals with incomes just above the Medicaid threshold.
“Individuals in New York, Minnesota, Oregon, and [soon] the District of Columbia are now, with more than a million-plus enrollees, saving billions of dollars,”said Sen. Cantwell.For example, if you buy the silver plan in New York, it's $9,[650], but if you buy basically the BHP plan, it's $7,500, so that's a 25% savings.”
“Currently, there are 15.8 million people at or under the 200% federal poverty line who are purchasing plans on the exchange right now. So if there was a way – I don't think you can get that done in 13 days, but if there was a way to make that change and move that population to a BHP plan, that's a potential savings just by our back of the envelope math of $33 billion,”she added.
In 2010, Cantwell authored the BHP provision that was included in the Affordable Care Act.