Tag: "health insurance exchange"

More Than One In Five Americans “Churn” Through Health Coverage Within A Year

Census2The U.S. Census Bureau has just released the Current Population Report’s Health Insurance Coverage in The United States, 2015. This report sits alongside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey as a critical source of understanding changes in health insurance in recent years.

The report discusses coverage during the three years from 2013 through 2015, so it does not reveal the large increase in employer-based coverage since the great recession. During this shorter period, there was an insignificant gain in employer-based coverage, and a large increase in persons dependent on Medicaid, the joint state-federal welfare program that provides health benefits to low-income residents. The number of people dependent on Medicaid for at least part of the year increased from 55 million in 2013 to 62 million in 2015. (Almost the entire increase took place in 2014, Obamacare’s first year of implementation.)

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Sep 20, 2016 | 9 comments | by

Recent Rise In Health Coverage Due To Return of Jobs With Benefits

NHIS(A version of this Health Alert was published by Forbes.)

The best measurement of people who lack health insurance, the National Health Interview Survey published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has released early estimates of health insurance for all fifty states and the District of Columbia in the first quarter of 2016. There are three things to note.

First: 70.2 percent of residents, age 18 to through 64, had “private health insurance” (at the time of the interview) in the first quarter of this year, which is which is the same rate as persisted until 2006. Obamacare has not achieved a breakthrough in coverage. It has just restored us to where we were a decade ago. Further, the contribution of Obamacare’s exchanges to this is almost trivial, covering only four million people.

What has really happened is a restoration of employer-based benefits as we have slowly clawed our way out of recession: 61.2 million people had non-exchange private insurance in Q1 2010. This included both employer-based benefits and the pre-Obamacare market for individual health insurance. By Q1 2016, this had increased to 66 million. Because most in the pre-Obamacare individual market have shifted into Obamacare exchange coverage, the increase in employer-based coverage will have been close to eight or nine million.

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Sep 09, 2016 | 24 comments | by

A Dull EDGE: The Administration Believes Obamacare’s Costs Went Down!

HealthcaredotgovThe Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has just made the remarkable claim that medical costs paid by health insurers operating in Obamacare’s exchanges declined in 2015 from 2014:

Per-enrollee costs in the ACA individual market were essentially unchanged between 2014 and 2015. Specifically, after making comparability adjustments described below, per-member-per month (PMPM) paid claims in the ACA individual market fell by 0.1 percent from 2014 to 2015. For comparison, per-enrollee costs in the broader health insurance market grew by at least 3 percent.

The report compares apples to oranges. When discussing the change in costs in the exchange, it estimates medical claims. When discussing changes in employer-sponsored health insurance, it estimates premiums (which increased 3 percent). The average Obamacare premium increased 5.2 percent in 2015, more than employer-sponsored coverage. (See note below.)

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Aug 18, 2016 | 9 comments | by

Obamacare Slightly Increased Short-Term Uninsured

NHISThe best measurement of people who lack health insurance, the National Health Interview Survey published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has released early estimates of health insurance for all fifty states and the District of Columbia in 2015. There are two things to note.

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Jun 09, 2016 | 20 comments | by

Obamacare 2016 Average Rate Hike 8 Percent

HealthcaredotgovWe are already anticipating double-digit premium hikes for Obamacare plans in 2017, based on insurance filings in a sufficient number of states to show the trend.

Obamacare’s defenders point out two limits to these leading indicators. First, they are requested, not approved rate hikes. Second, Obamacare beneficiaries can trade down. A person whose plan hikes premiums double digits can switch to a plan with a lesser increase. Both criticisms are fair.

Nevertheless, now that the dust has settled on 2016, and all the data on this year’s enrollment analyzed, we can confirm from two pro-Obamacare sources that premiums in Obamacare’s exchange plans increased by an average of eight percent from 2015 to 2016. General measures of price changes, such as Consumer Price Inflation, were effectively flat over the period. That is, the eight percent Obamacare premium hike was a real, not nominal, price hike.

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Jun 07, 2016 | 8 comments | by

Obamacare Exchange Average Premium Hike 16 Percent Next Year

CAM00109Caroline F. Pearson of the Avalere consulting firm has surveyed states which have already published 2017 Obamacare exchange premiums. Among eight states and the District of Columbia, the average requested rate hike is 16 percent for popular Silver plans:

Specifically, average proposed rate increases across all silver plans in the nine states examined range from 44 percent in Vermont to 5 percent in Washington. In 2016, 68 percent of exchange enrollees selected silver plans.

According to the data, in most states, proposed premiums for lower cost silver plans increased less dramatically or even went down for 2017, compared to higher-cost plans on the same tier. Lower-cost silver plans tend to be most popular with consumers, making this portion of the market more competitive as plans seek to attract enrollees.

The devil is in the details: The lowest premium Silver plan is going up seven percent, and the second lowest 8 percent, which means most Silver plans are going up more than 16 percent.

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May 31, 2016 | 17 comments | by

Taxpayers Increasingly Victimized in Obamacare Exchanges

-18(A version of this Health Alert was published by The Hill.)

Recent news has renewed attention on Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges (misleadingly called “marketplaces” by the Administration).

America’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, will all but withdraw from the Obamacare exchange business. Having sold plans in 34 states this year, the company will participate in only a “handful” next year. With 795,000 beneficiaries, UnitedHealth Group indicates it will lose $650 million in the exchanges this year – over $800 per enrollee.

Other insurers are sticking it out. Notably, Anthem, another leading for-profit insurer, which has nearly one million Obamacare enrollees, is positive about its future in the exchanges. In its latest quarterly earnings call, Anthem anticipated a profit of three to five percent. However, that is not likely to happen until 2017. Further, the insurer said it needs the federal government to take unspecified actions to “stabilize” the market. Anthem’s optimism is surprising.

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May 11, 2016 | 24 comments | by

Health Insurers Shift More Costs To Taxpayers In Obamacare Exchanges

money-burden(A version of this Health Alert was published by Forbes.)

America’s health insurers are undergoing a crisis of consensus with respect to their engagement with Obamacare. Between 2010 (when the Affordable Care Act was signed), and 2014 (the first year of taxpayer-subsidized coverage in the health insurance exchanges), it was widely understood that health insurers had scored a big win. After all, which other industry could get the federal government to pass a law mandating individuals purchase its product or service as a condition of residency in the United States?

This view was reflected in the stock market’s valuation of health insurers, which outperformed the S&P 500 Index. Since then, of course, we have learned that insurers have been losing money on Obamacare’s exchanges. Further, they have lost the sympathetic ear of the Congressional Republican majority, which has prevented insurers extracting as much taxpayer funding as they had expected from the Treasury. We should not expect insurers which continue to participate in exchanges to just keep losing money. In fact, the evidence indicates some insurers have quickly learned how to shift more costs onto taxpayers, despite failing to win an explicit political commitment to do so.

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May 04, 2016 | 15 comments | by

Administration Still Bailing Insurers Out of Obamacare Exchanges

money-rollsThe Obama Administration refuses to concede defeat in its struggle to save Obamacare’s exchanges. The exchanges lost one quarter of their members in 2015. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has reported its insurance plans have enrolled people significantly sicker (and more expensive) than anticipated. Finally, UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer, will drop out of most of the exchanges in which it is participating.

Desperate to induce insurers to continue participating in exchanges, the Administration suggested it would make illegal payments from “risk corridors,” a risk-mitigation mechanism that moves money between insurers to stabilize their profits in Obamacare’s first three years. Republicans in Congress put a stop to that in 2014. So, the Administration proposes apparently illegal payments from another risk-mitigation fund, called “reinsurance.”

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Apr 21, 2016 | 26 comments | by

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association Confirms Obamacare Death Spiral

CAM00109The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which represents 36 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans covering 105 million Americans has released a study of its members’ claims data in Obamacare exchanges 2014 and 2015. It confirms Obamacare exchange enrollees are sicker and more expensive than enrollees in pre-Obamacare individual plans or employer-based plans:

Members who newly enrolled in BCBS individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 have higher rates of certain diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, depression, coronary artery disease, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Hepatitis C than individuals who had BCBS individual coverage prior to health-care reform.

Consumers who newly enrolled in BCBS individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 received significantly more medical care, on average, than those with BCBS individual plans prior to 2014 who maintained BCBS individual health coverage into 2015, as well as those with BCBS employer-based group health insurance.

The new enrollees used more medical services across all sites of care—including inpatient admissions, outpatient visits, medical professional services, prescriptions filled and emergency room visits.

Medical costs of care for the new individual market members were, on average, 19 percent higher than employer-based group members in 2014 and 22 percent higher in 2015. For example, the average monthly medical spending per member was $559 for individual enrollees versus $457 for group members in 2015.

These health plans have not done a great job containing costs in employer-based health plans either. Those policies’ average monthly health spending increased 8 percent in the first nine months of 2015 versus 2014. However, costs in individual policies increased 12 percent, half again as much. This means the gap in medical spending between the two markets is increasing.

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Apr 07, 2016 | 14 comments | by
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