You nearly passed out seeing the price hike on your health insurance bill last year and you’ve heard speculations for 2017. If you’re at all concerned about your finances or your health insurance coverage for the coming year, you may want to check what your insurers are proposing — if you don’t know already.

Wisconsin residents got quite the shock this week when they discovered health insurers are proposing the largest rate increases yet for health plans sold on the local online marketplaces.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee is requesting a 62 percent average rate increase.

The proposed increases range from 5.44 percent to 37.88 percent statewide, according to filings with the federal government, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Wisconsin residents aren’t alone. States across the nation are bracing for a smaller number of providers and, on average, steep increases in premiums.

In Oregon’s individual market, 10 companies submitted average rate change requests ranging from a 0-percent to 32.3-percent increase. In the small group market, 12 companies submitted average rate requests ranging from a 5-percent decrease to a 17-percent increase.

In Connecticut, 14 health insurance companies requested average rate increases from 2.1 percent to 32 percent.

Yet the above-mentioned hikes pale in comparison to the proposed changes from the three carriers offering plans in the Tennessee exchange for 2017. That state is said to have the highest average rate hike for 2017 in the nation, according to healthinsurance.org. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which covers 68.9 percent of the exchange market share, is requesting a 62 percent average rate increase.

“BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which captured the biggest share of the new market in Tennessee even after a 36-percent rate hike this year and a 19-percent rate increase in the previous year, is proposing further premium increases next year, anywhere from 36.3 percent to 90.5 percent on differing plans,” the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported Tuesday.

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Cigna, which covers 8.6 percent of the Tennessee exchange market share, is requesting a 46-percent average rate increase. Humana, which covers 6.7 percent of the exchange market share in Tennessee, is requesting a 29-percent to 44.3-percent average rate increase.

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If you still don’t understand why these dramatic rate increases are happening — the American Academy of Actuaries defines it this way: Proposed premiums are based on projected medical claims and administrative costs for pools of individuals or groups with insurance. Pooling risk allows the costs of the less healthy to be subsidized by the healthy.

But the Affordable Care Act has not had that healthy pool of individuals to balance out those coming in with higher-than-expected claims, nor anywhere near the volume of participants once expected in the exchange.

The Congressional Budget Office said 21 million people would be covered by marketplace plans this year. Only about 10 million have bought into the coverage, the Journal Sentinel reported.

Hence — consumer premiums continue to rise.

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Other factors may include an overall growth in health care costs, changes in provider networks, changes in competition, and the sunset of the reinsurance program — which helped insurers make up for losses up until now.

“The truth behind such ‘insurance’ is nobody would ever buy it voluntarily, since by definition it isn’t insurance. It’s a cost-shifting mechanism in which nobody would participate if they were paying more than they were getting, since, 1) you wouldn’t voluntarily do so unless you were deceived; or, 2) you were forced by some law or regulation,” said Dr. Ramin Oskoui, a Washington, D.C.-based cardiologist.

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Oskoui told LifeZette he is increasingly hearing from patients that they’re worried about the cost of their insurance — not just in 2017, but moving forward. There are fewer providers to choose from and rising costs aren’t options that will encourage anyone with choices to sign up for Obamacare.

And it’s not just the rate hikes his patients are concerned about, but deductibles as well, he said. Those who own businesses are especially concerned.

The ACA, he strongly believes, is not sustainable long-term and he doesn’t blame insurers from pulling out of the marketplace. He said that Aetna, one of the largest and most recent to announce its withdrawal from the Obamacare pool of insurers, was only doing the logical and fiscally responsible thing.

“A market-based system is the only way,” said Dr. Oskoui. “That or economic collapse. Single-payer medicine will not fix any of this; it will simply shift all of it to the federal government, which will be driven into either fiscal insolvency or cut off services to tens of millions of Americans who will then, as a consequence, die,” he added.