Bare-bones health insurance could cost just $11 a month for a family of four in Indianapolis on the federal governments new exchanges, which start serving customers next week.
A similar family in New Orleans might pay as little as $23 a month, although they’d have to shell out $282 for a more generous “silver” plan, the Health and Human Services Department estimates.
And, on average, people will have more than 50 different health plans to choose from if they live in states where the federal government is running the exchanges, HHS says in a report issued Wednesday.
HHS has analyzed the plans that have been approved to go on offer starting Tuesday and finds that in most states, there’s plenty of choice with reasonable prices. That gives the administration ammunition against critics who have been warning that health insurance will cost more in the exchanges than it does now.
“In many cases, premiums will cost significantly less than what was originally projected,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters on a conference call. The report finds that 95 percent of Americans live in states where the premiums for individually purchased health insurance will be less than what had originally been expected.
MORE: $11 a month? Obamacare super-cheap for some, feds find – NBC News.com.