HHS Secretary touts lower Affordable Care Act premiums

• "The president who was supposedly trying to sabotage the Affordable Care Act has proven better at managing it than the president who wrote the law," Azar said.

Between the lines: The drop in premiums is primarily because insurers raised them too much last year. They did so after President Trump ended the ACA's cost-sharing reduction payments.

• But that had less of an impact than expected, based on the way insurers responded.
• "Perhaps ironically, the termination of cost-sharing subsidies has actually promoted stability by boosting premium subsidies, but that wasn't exactly the stated intention of the administration," Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation told Caitlin.
• Other actions taken under the Trump administration, like the repeal of the individual mandate and the expansion of short-term plans, have probably resulted in premiums decreasing less than they would have otherwise, Levitt added.

State reinsurance programs, which the administration has been actively supportive of, have also played a roll in premium stabilization.