NYDFS, NYSOH, CMS ANNOUNCE ADDITIONAL ACTIONS REGARDING HEALTH REPUBLIC INSURANCE OF NEW YORK
The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), the New York State of Health Marketplace (NYSOH), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced additional actions regarding Health Republic Insurance of New York (“Health Republic”) and a transition plan for Health Republic customers.
Among the various provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the one which intrigued me the most was the creation of 23 "Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans", or "CO-OPs". The idea was to create non-profit quasi-public/private healthcare insurance organizations (similar in nature, I believe, to Credit Unions, except for health insurance), to compete with the private, profit-based insurance providers.
Unfortunately, as the Office of the Inspector General noted in a July report (in huge font size for some reason), after two Open Enrollment periods have come and gone, the ACA CO-OPs aren't doing very well for the most part, to put it mildly.
After yesterday's ugly news about Alaska's private policy rate hikes, this is welcome relief:
Judge says Alaska Medicaid expansion can go ahead Tuesday
An Anchorage trial court judge Friday said that Alaska Gov. Bill Walker’s administration can expand the Medicaid health care program starting next week, dismissing a request by the state Legislature to temporarily block enrollment while attorneys fully argue lawmakers’ legal challenge.
In a 45-minute opinion delivered from the bench, Pfiffner rejected a series of arguments by the Legislature that starting expanded Medicaid enrollment Tuesday was so problematic that it should be put on hold while the Legislature’s lawsuit proceeds.
The actual lawsuit will still proceed, but this is still great news for up to 40,000 Alaskans.
Just 2 days ago I posted an analysis of the New York individual market rate increase requests for 2016. My takeaway was that the weighted average requested was 10.0%, with the usual caveats about rounding errors, estimates of the total individual market size and so forth. Plus, of course, these were just requested increases, not final ones.
NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF FINANCIAL SERVICES ANNOUNCES 2016 HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUM RATES, INCLUDING RATES FOR NY STATE OF HEALTH
Individual Rates for 2016 Remain Nearly 50% Lower than Before Establishment of New York’s Health Exchange
DFS Rate Reduction Actions Will Save Consumers More than $430 million
New Essential Plan Will Lower Premiums to $20 or Less and Provide Better Benefits for Lower-income New Yorkers
Unfortunately, the data gets cut off as of 2/28/15, so this doesn't give any insight into the attrition rate since then (or a precise count of how many additional people enrolled during the #ACATaxTime special enrollment period which followed). However, it does give a lot of detailed analysis of the open enrollment period numbers, and does tack on an extra week's worth of private enrollments & 2 week's worth of CH+/Medicaid numbers (the official HHS report only ran through 2/21 for New York and the last press release with CH+/Medicaid numbers was as of 2/15).
As a result, the official numbers are slightly higher than what I had until now across the board:
Huh. This is kind of weird...two completely different stories, from two different reporters (although both are via the Associated Press) about the latest Medicaid expansion numbers from two of the largest states at opposite ends of the country: California and New York.
This wouldn't be surprising if there had been a major report/press release regarding Medicaid enrollment nationally broken out by state, of course, but as far as I know there hasn't been (the last report from CMS came out in early June, only runs through March and doesn't distinguish between "traditional" and "expanded" Medicaid anyway).
In any event, I'm happy to report that the numbers actually line up pretty closely with what I already had estimated for each state:
Over the past couple of weeks, I've posted a bunch of entries both here and over at healthinsurance.org about not freaking out when you see "OMG!!! MASSIVE OBAMACARE RATE HIKES NEXT YEAR WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIIIIIIIE!!!"-style headlines such as this giant one from CNN Money:
The angle being played is emphasized right off the bat with the big, scary-looking graphic above the story:
Even the sub-headline pushes the hair-on-fire meme:
