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The Urban Institute has put out a useful brief quantifying the annual impact on premiums of the essential health benefits in a typical silver plan.
The picture is about what one should expect: office-based care (physician preventive care, physician primary care, physician specialty care, other provider care separately), hospital care (inpatient and outpatient), and prescription drugs drive most of your premium expense. Together they constitute 84% of the premium--92% if you include emergency department coverage in there.
The derided benefits (e.g., maternity and pediatric dental/vision) are a comparatively small fraction of your premium expense. Pediatric coverage in particular. Maternity/newborn care costs more but still adds less than $300 to the annual premium, whereas limiting those benefits only to those who specifically need then would raise their premiums by almost $14K.
The picture is about what one should expect: office-based care (physician preventive care, physician primary care, physician specialty care, other provider care separately), hospital care (inpatient and outpatient), and prescription drugs drive most of your premium expense. Together they constitute 84% of the premium--92% if you include emergency department coverage in there.
The derided benefits (e.g., maternity and pediatric dental/vision) are a comparatively small fraction of your premium expense. Pediatric coverage in particular. Maternity/newborn care costs more but still adds less than $300 to the annual premium, whereas limiting those benefits only to those who specifically need then would raise their premiums by almost $14K.