The 2016 rate-increase hysteria has already started. Before you freak out, here are four things to remember about premium-hike proposals.
May 15 officially marked the start of the 2016 rate review season. What that means for Americans is that over the next month or so, newspapers and web sites across the country will start running stories with scary-sounding headlines like this:
Some Oregonians could face major insurance rate hikes next year
Health plans request double-digit premium increases
...The articles will throw a bunch of numbers around, saying that the “average” premium rate increase for a given state is expected to be X percent, followed by examples of the highest and lowest increases. There may even be a few “Company Y will actually be reducing their rates!” thrown in.
Colorado lost their Co-Op...and CO is also one of only two states (Oregon is the other one) to drop their "transitional" policies as of the end of 2015. As a result, Colorado has a lot of people who could still potentially enroll by the end of February thanks to the 60-day Loss of Coverage Special Enrollment Period provision.
Louise Norris noted that there were around 39,000 ex-Co-Op members in Colorado (along with some others) who could still potentially enroll during February via the SEP option; I spitballed anywhere from 10,000 - 20,000 more Coloradoans might yet be added. There are also the normal SEPs for things like getting married, giving birth and so forth.
I get a lot of ACA and healthcare-related email, as you might imagine. Sometimes it's a hot tip about some breaking news story or wonky report being released. Sometimes it's a clarification or correction of something I just posted from an industry insider wanting to clear the record. Sometimes it's a borderline illiterate Ted Cruz supporter complaining about how Cruz is shaking supporters down for cash or trash-talking his opponents. Sometimes it's an anti-ACA advocate arguing a point with me. Sometimes it's a scam artist trying to hustle me.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The state's health exchange expects to enroll more than 470,000 New Yorkers in its new low-cost option for coverage this year.
Testifying at an Assembly hearing this week, exchange Executive Director Donna Frescatore said New York chose to participate with the Essential Plan. The plan is an option under the federal Affordable Care Act starting in 2016.
It's aimed at adults who don't qualify for Medicaid but have been unable to afford private coverage.
The Essential Plan has no annual deductible before insurance begins paying medical bills.
Premiums are free for those with incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.
With that in mind, I wanted to highlight an important point. For some time now, Bernie Sanders has been pointing out repeatedly that around 29 million people remain uninsured despite the Affordable Care Act. This has become one of his core bullet point arguments in favor of his Single Payer healthcare plan which, if enacted, would supposedly cover everyone in the country (more efficiently, with more comprehensive coverage, lower overhead, etc etc).
NOTE: To clarify, I'm not saying that Bernie is the one blaming the law for the 29 million, but I keep hearing a lot of other people doing so. I only mentioned him because instead of touting the 20 million people who the law has helped gain coverage, he focuses almost exclusively on the 29 million that it hasn't. A little balanced perspective is what I'm talking about.
I've stated many, many times that in spite of how unimpressed I am with Sanders's plan itself, in the long term I do think that something like it is our best option. However, for the moment I wanted to take a closer look at the breakout of those 29 million people:
Uninsured - Medicaid Eligible: 5.0 million
Uninsured - CHIP Eligible: 3.0 million
Uninsured - Medicaid Gap: 2.8 million
Uninsured - Undocumented Immigrants: 4.7 million
Eligible for ACA Tax Credits: 6.5 million
Ineligible for ACA Tax Credits: 7.0 million
Now, if you want to complain that the ACA is too complicated, pads the insurance carriers's pockets, doesn't keep costs down enough and so forth, those are reasonable arguments.
However, if you're arguing that the ACA is "failing" because it has "only" cut the uninsured rate by about 40% since 2013 instead of down to 0%, that's an absurdly unfair attack for two reasons. First, the ACA itself was never intended to get the U.S. to 100% coverage...nor did anyone ever claim that it would.
UnitedHealth Group will stop offering plans on Arkansas' health insurance exchange next year, a spokesman for the Arkansas Insurance Department said Thursday.
The Minnetonka, Minn.-based insurer offered plans this year for the first time, but it didn't submit plans to the department for 2017, department spokesman Ryan James said.
The deadline for insurers to submit such plans was April 1, he said.
This is hardly unexpected news for a couple of reasons. First, UHC made huge waves last November by making a big, dramatic announcement that they might very well drop out of the ACA exchanges altogether next year after taking large losses on exchange enrollees in 2015. As you may recall, this was a very oddly-timed announcement given that they had issued a glowing quarterly report just a month earlier which made it sound like everything was hunky-dory.
I was flattered to have my U.S. Healthcare Coverage Breakout chart receive the top spot in this week's Health Wonk Review over at Jaan Sidorov's appropriately-titled Population Health Blog:
Charles Gaba of ACASignups has been tracking the progress of the Affordable Care Act. This ongoing labor of love led him to comb through too-numerous-to-count public domain sources to provide an original-sourced summary (with links galore) of the health insurance status for the entire U.S. population in one chart. He calls it "ambitious." The PHB calls it gloriously detailed, credible and superb. KHN, you've met your match.
OK, I think that last line is a bit over the top (KHN refers to Kaiser Health News), but I appreciate the sentiment.
Check out the whole thing for some other fantastic Health Wonk writing!
I know I haven't posted much of anything for the past week or so. I'm playing catch-up with my day job and my kid is on spring break this week, so I haven't had much time to devote to the site. Furthermore, we're spending today at the Michigan Science Center, so I can't really do a proper post today either.
Every once in awhile, I like to take a look at the analytics reports for ACASignups. Usually it's just keeping track of the number of site visitors; occasionally I'll poke around a bit more in depth, especially when there's a huge traffic spike like the one caused by Michael Hiltzik's L.A. Times story showcasing my "Total Coverage Type" Pie Chart a few days back.
However, once in a blue moon I'll snoop around a bit more and look at who's visiting...and the results can be surprising, even after you cull out the random typo visits and bot crawlers.
Case in point: Check out this map showing where the most recent 1,000 visitors to the site were located. For the most part it's not terribly surprising, with the vast bulk of traffic coming from the U.S. (including at least one visitor from Hawaii) or Europe, followed by scattered instances from other countries here and there...
OK, this is totally off-topic, and I know I'm gonna face an earful in the comments over this, but I have to make a few comments on the ongoing "Democratic Superdelegate" brouhaha amongst Bernie Sanders's supporters.
First of all, there are 712 "unpledged" delegates (or "superdelegates") for the Democratic Party this year out of 4,763 total. That's around 15% of all Democratic delegates. The eventual nominee needs at least 2,382 total delegates to win the nomination.
So, it's important to keep in mind that pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses determine around 85% of the total. It's the remaining 15% who people are getting all worked up about.
Normally, of course, this isn't an issue because one candidate or another ends up securing more than half of the grand total via the caucuses/primaries anyway, making the SDs a moot point.
