Me and the ACA down by the schoolyard

The following is not an endorsement or condemnation of any particular policy - this is simply my experience.  

As my firm provides health insurance to full-time employees, we met with our insurance adviser  to discuss our annual renewal . The result - a 32% increase in the bill.  I've been both anticipating and dreading this meeting, but I have been primarily interested in what would happen to our premiums due to the insurer's response to the Affordable Care Act.

This is where it gets interesting - our insurer, a major carrier, uses individual rates for all enrollees rather than leveling the premiums after a certain number of enrollees. So, I can see how it breaks down.  Here's what happened:  

The rate for our youngest male enrolled employee more than doubled.  The rates for the rest of our male enrolled employees under 40 increased markedly, although not quite doubling.  In contrast, the rates for our oldest enrolled male employees stayed pretty flat.  The rates for the female enrolled employees stayed pretty flat too. 

So what happened? Did some of our staff members suddenly get way more likely to get sick? No,  it would seem that the culprit is the ACA mandate that gender can't be considered.  And, it's pretty well-settled that females use more healthcare dollars than males. So, rates for the younger males go up, but the rates for the females do not come down by a corresponding amount - they stay flat.  This means that the present state of the world is as follows -  the rates are individual in the sense that we get a different one for each of our staff members, but they are no longer individual in the sense that each rate reflects the person's likelihood to avail themselves of medical care.  The actuarial tables are out the window.

Ultimately, as the (co-)employer, I only care about the fact that the check we have to write is 32% larger.  And, because we foot the entire bill for the premium for full-time employees, they don't really have to care either.  If, however, I was a 30 year old male who had to pay some portion of the premium under an employer-sponsored plan, and my share suddenly doubled, I'd be more than a little cranky, and maybe not really be so enamored of the brave new world where political mandates override statistical realities.