The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide on the constitutionality of the subsidies people get to help pay for insurance on Healthcare.gov.
The health care access advocacy group, Families USA, looked at the data from Florida and other states that opted not to set up their own health care exchanges to see how many people could lose that help.
Executive director Ron Pollack says the number is fairly staggering.
“Florida is the state that has the largest number of people who are at risk of losing subsidies,” Pollack said. “All together in the 27 congressional districts, the number of people at risk is 1,325,000 people.”
Pollack says the average subsidized premium in Florida is around $82 a month. Without the subsidy, he says, the cost would be 4 ½ times higher.
“If they lost these subsidies, it would increase to $376 a month,” Pollack said. “In other words, individuals would be paying on average $294 more per month.”
The numbers in the report come from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Pollack says Families USA decided to release the numbers ahead of the Supreme Court decision to show Congress what’s at stake.
The justices could rule on the landmark case, King v. Burwell, as early as Thursday.
