Murphy, a Democrat, revealed the decrease during a news conference at Hackensack Meridian Health Riverview Medical Center in Monmouth County, where he said the decrease came despite actions by Republican President Donald Trump to destabilize the state’s insurance market and cripple the Affordable Care Act.

RED BANK — Gov. Phil Murphy continued to tout the impact of legislation he signed this year to stabilize the state’s health insurance market on Friday when he announced that the average price for plans sold on the state’s individual market would drop by just over 9 percent next year.

Murphy, a Democrat, revealed the decrease during a news conference at Hackensack Meridian Health Riverview Medical Center in Monmouth County, where he said the decrease came despite actions by Republican President Donald Trump to destabilize the state’s insurance market and cripple the Affordable Care Act.

If not for state action, he claimed insurance prices in the state would have risen more than 12 percent.

“New Jersey is not buying into the false idea being pushed by the president and his ilk in Washington that the best health care policy is to just not get sick,” Murphy said during his remarks. “New Jersey is going to prove that when you stick to the tenets of the Affordable Care Act you actually end up with more affordable health care. We’re taking this challenge seriously and head on, and because we are, consumers are seeing real and substantial savings.”

The individual plans are sold on the federal marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. Open enrollment is scheduled to start Nov. 1.

About 275,000 New Jerseyans obtained coverage through the ACA’s exchange this year, down from 295,000 who signed up for coverage last year.

The governor said the decrease would mean the average cost of a so-called “silver plan” is expected to decrease from around $350 a month to $314, saving consumers who purchase those plans around $422 a year. Without state legislation, Murphy claimed the price of the same plan would have cost about $528 more.

“That’s savings the president didn’t want you to have,” he said, citing the Republican tax overhaul, which eliminated the penalty for most residents who don’t obtain acceptable health coverage.

Insurance officials had warned that the loss of the so-called individual mandate would likely result in substantially higher premiums from younger, healthier consumers forgoing insurance and shrinking the risk pool.

In response, New Jersey lawmakers approved legislation to create the state’s own insurance mandate and penalty, and a second bill to create a state reinsurance program to reimburse insurers for a portion of the cost of expensive claims. Doing so reduces those companies’ costs and risks and allows them to charge less for premiums.

New Jersey was given the go-ahead from the federal government to implement the reinsurance program last month as part of a 1332 State Innovation Waiver.

The state has also requested $218 million in federal pass-through money to help fund the program in 2019. Another $100 million for the program is expected to come from revenues generated from the state’s penalty on residents who fail to obtain adequate health coverage.

State Sen. Troy Singleton, D-7th of Palmyra, who was a co-sponsor of both measures, said the reduction in insurance costs affirms the actions state lawmakers took in response to Trump’s “intentional sabotage” of the Affordable Care Act.

“While the nearly 10 percent reduction is a positive outcome of the law I helped write to stabilize the market, one cannot help but be extremely frustrated by the actions of the Trump administration and its Congressional enablers who have consistently worked to undermine the underpinnings of the Affordable Care Act,” he said in a statement. “Absent their intentional sabotage of the act, New Jersey residents would have saw a greater reduction in the cost of health insurance and a continued decrease of the number of uninsured in our state.”

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