The main focus of this Late Night with Seth Meyers segment is about how Donald Trump completely whiffed on what should have been a reasonably strong attack on Hillary Clinton: Namely, the 25% average unsubsidized individual market rate hikes which are coming next year.
In the process, however, Meyers actually did a fairly good job of summarizing the situation:
"Now, that's bad news on the surface...but it's still in line with the projections made by the Congressional Budget Office. Obviously, Obamacare is a nuanced, complicated issue that requires sober analysis and discussion...or, as Donald Trump put it..."
NOTE 10/29/16: For anyone who read this entry yesterday, please note that I've gone back and completely reworked all 4 the charts, along with adding a fifth one, for several reasons:
I had to correct an error re. Medicaid expansion (I had Iowa not expanded and Wisconsin expanded by mistake)
I was able to add the final approved averages for both New Hampshire and Virginia, leaving Louisiana as the only state with a "requested" average only
The original graphs only listed the median rate hikes for each group; they now list the actual weightedaverages for each group of states
I even added a fifth chart which separates the states out into those which embraced all 3 provisions vs. those which only embraced 1 or 2 of them, and those which didn't implement any.
OK. I ran the numbers several different ways way back in August, when I had compiled the requested 2017 individual market rate hike averages for all 50 states (+DC). However, many things have changed since then. Not only do I have the approved rate changes for 48 states, there were a lot of other major changes along the way, including various carrier pullouts and rate filing re-submissions.
As noted before, I'm really trying to move onto the actual enrollment part of the 2017 open enrollment period, but I can't resist doing some more final cleanup of my Rate Hike project:
SOUTH CAROLINA: This is one of the 5 states which I still didn't have approved rate changes for. Today the RateReview.HC.gov site finally added in the final numbers for SC, so here's what it looks like:
Aetna was a bit tricky--the total enrollee number is actually 41,988. They dropped out of the ACA exchange but are sticking around the off-exchange market, so I had to figure out how many of those 42K are on vs. off-exchange. The answer is in this article which notes:
More than 220,000 South Carolinians rely on the federal health care law for insurance. This year, only 8,000 of them are covered by Aetna plans.
Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that the Obama administration is lying about the size of ObamaCare premium hikes, saying it put out a "phony" number.
The administration on Monday announced that the average premium increase for a benchmark ObamaCare plan will be 25 percent for 2017, a number seized on by Republicans.
But Trump took the line of attack a step farther.
“And the number of 25 percent is nothing,” the GOP presidential nominee told Fox News. “That’s a phony number, too, that’s a lie, just like everything else.”
Going into the fourth year of open enrollment, my work here at ACA Signups has started to fall into a seasonal pattern. During open enrollment itself, of course, it's all about the core mission of the site: Live-tracking the number of people who actually sign up for ACA exchange policies, and the related news items which accompany that. In the spring, it's all about dust settling and wrapping up: Plugging in the hard numbers, seeing how they compare with what I had projected and so on.
In the summer and fall, however, I'm on my second year of tracking the average (unsubsidized) rate increases people can expect for the following year.
Last week I noted that with 41 states accounted for and the 2017 Open Enrollment Period quickly bearing down on everyone, it was time to pull the plug on my 2017 Average Rate Hike project and move on. I had come up with an overall national weighted unsubsidized average rate increase of around 25% for ACA-compliant individual market plans.
However, I also noted that I'd make sure to fill in the approved rates for the remaining 10 states as they came in, for completeness sake...and today, thanks to the HHS Dept. cutting the ribbon on 2017 Window Shopping at HealthCare.Gov, I've also been able to fill in the blanks for five of the remaining states all in one shot (the other five remain elusive).
More Than 70 Percent of Consumers Can Find Marketplace Plans for Less than $75 Per Month
With Start of Window Shopping, Americans Can Now Check Out Options for 2017 Coverage
With window shopping beginning today, Health Insurance Marketplace consumers can now visit HealthCare.gov to check out their options for 2017 coverage in advance of the start of Open Enrollment on November 1. A new report released today shows that 72 percent of Marketplace consumers in states using HealthCare.gov will be able to find plans with a premium of less than $75 per month and 77 percent will be able to find plans with premiums below $100, taking into account financial assistance. The report also shows that consumers will have options, with an average of 30 health insurance plans to choose from.
Let's step through the process and see what's changed, shall we?
First of all, the general interface is mostly the same but has a slightly different layout:
designed to be even more mobile-friendly (note the arrow at the top right...that toggles a vertical menu which lets you move back/forth between steps in the form process):
Consumers can expect at least two big changes this fall when they go shopping for their 2016 health insurance through the Massachusetts Health Connector: significantly fewer choices, and a new mechanism to find out which care networks include their doctors.
The Connector staff told the agency’s governing board Thursday that the number of plans offered next year will be no more than 81, down from the current 126.
The board had agreed in March that the Connector needed to simplify its offerings. The differences among the plans were described as too small to justify the confusion caused by so many options.
