WASHINGTON — Premiums for a popular type of “silver” health plan under the Affordable Care Act will edge downward next year in most states, the Trump administration’s health chief announced Thursday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said premiums for a so-called “benchmark” silver plan will drop by 2 percent in the 39 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website.

The number of marketplace insurers will grow for the first time since 2015, he added.

Azar’s numbers were in line with a broader independent analysis earlier this month by Avalere Health and Associated Press, which found premiums and markets stabilizing nationwide. But his claim that the Trump administration deserves credit for “Obamacare’s” turnabout was quickly challenged.

“The president who was supposedly trying to sabotage the Affordable Care Act has proved better at managing it than the president who wrote the law,” Azar bragged in his speech to a health policy group in Nashville.

The earlier AP analysis had found that average premiums across all types of plans under the Obama health law will rise 3.3 percent, with 12 states seeing declines.