Tag: "health insurance"

Health Insurers’ Collapsing Obamacare Consensus

Marilyn Tavenner, CEO of AHIP

M. Tavenner, CEO of AHIP

The health insurance industry is undergoing a crisis of consensus on how to respond to the failure of Obamacare. That is the only way to interpret the departure of another large, national carrier, Aetna, from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). This follows UnitedHealth Group’s departure from the industry’s trade group last June:

Those misgivings manifested most recently during the debate over ObamaCare when the so-called “big five” — UnitedHealthcare, Anthem, Aetna, Humana and Cigna — formed their own informal coalition.

Another healthcare executive, who asked for anonymity in order to speak freely, said that, for some, “there’s a sense that AHIP has become a one-trick pony for the Obama administration,” referring to the goal of advancing ObamaCare.

With the country’s first- and third-largest health insurers gone from its ranks, the insurance group could see problems arise from the divisions between large and small companies.

(Peter Sullivan & Megan R. Wilson, “Aetna departure a major blow for insurers group,” The Hill, January 5, 2016).

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Jan 07, 2016 | 5 comments | by

Understanding Why Employer Benefit Costs Are Rising Slowly

Aon Hewitt, a leading actuarial consulting firm, has reported extremely good news about the cost of employee benefits:

2015 Records Lowest U.S. Health Care Cost Increases in Nearly 20 years

– Rate of increase was 3.2%

– Average health care cost per employee topped $11,000

– Employees’ share of health care costs have increased more than 134% since 2005

After plan design changes and vendor negotiations, a recent analysis by Aon (NYSE: AON) shows the average health care rate increase for mid-size and large companies was 3.2 percent in 2015, marking the lowest rate increase since Aon began tracking the data in 1996. Aon projects average premium increases will jump to 4.1 percent in 2016.

Aon Hewitt’s 3.2 percent rate of growth includes only premium. When employees’ out-of-pocket costs are included, the reason for the slow growth becomes apparent.

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Dec 17, 2015 | 10 comments | by

Hillary Clinton Profits from Big Pharma, Big Insurance

Chris Jacobs of the Conservative Review has an interesting review of Hillary Clinton’s business income from health insurers and pharmaceutical manufacturers:

At the end of this campaign’s first debate for Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton claimed that she counted the pharmaceutical and insurance industries as her enemies. Since that time, various reports have focused on the way in which her campaigns, as well as the Clinton Foundation, have profited from contributions by drug and insurance companies. However, few have reported how Bill and Hillary Clinton personally profited from insurance and drug company largesse.

To call it mere profit would be an understatement. As the below spreadsheet shows, financial disclosure records filed by the Clintons demonstrate that since Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, he and his wife have received more than $9.3 million in honoraria for speeches before groups associated with health care, and a whopping $3.4 million for speeches paid for by groups in the drug, device, and insurance industries (bolded in the spreadsheet).

(Readers can download the spreadsheet at Mr. Jacob’s article.)

My own conclusion is that the health insurers will get what they paid for, if Mrs. Clinton is elected President, whereas the drug-makers will be reminded of the old adage that “you cannot buy politicians; but only rent them.”

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Nov 06, 2015 | 3 comments | by

Another Day, Another Obamacare COOP Closes

Did the sun come up this morning? That must mean another Obamacare COOP has closed. This time, it is in South Carolina:

CCHP

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Oct 23, 2015 | 4 comments | by

High-Deductible Health Insurance Crushes Health Spending

A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) shows how much high-deductible health plans reduce spending:

We study consumer responsiveness to medical care prices, leveraging a natural experiment that occurred at a large self-insured firm which forced all of its employees to switch from an insurance plan that provided free health care to a non-linear, high deductible plan. The switch caused a spending reduction between 11.79%-13.80% of total firm-wide health spending ($100 million lower spending per year). We decompose this spending reduction into the components of (i) consumer price shopping (ii) quantity reductions (iii) quantity substitutions, finding that spending reductions are entirely due to outright reductions in quantity. We find no evidence of consumers learning to price shop after two years in high-deductible coverage. Consumers reduce quantities across the spectrum of health care services, including potentially valuable care (e.g. preventive services) and potentially wasteful care (e.g. imaging services).

(Z.C. Brot-Golberg, et al., What Does a Deductible Do? The Impact of Cost-Sharing on Health Care Prices, Quantities, and Spending Dynamics,” NBER WP No. 21632, October 2015.)

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Oct 21, 2015 | 38 comments | by

Colorado Health Insurance COOP Closed

CO COOPLast Friday, Colorado’s Division of Insurance ordered the state’s Obamacare COOP not to offer policies in the state’s Obamacare exchange next year. Obamacare’s COOPs are cascading into collapse quite quickly. NCPA has been studying them since last June, and our research has been prescient.

Obamacare COOPs were specifically stood up by the Affordable Care Act with government loans. They cannot hide their Obamacare losses like larger, incumbent insurers (for which Obamacare exchanges are small parts of their businesses) can.

To show how fast the fall of this COOP has happened, I’ll share three stories:

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Oct 19, 2015 | 2 comments | by

Jeb Bush Health Reform: Innovation and Patient-Centered Care

Bush2(A version of this Health Alert was published by The Hill.)

By avoiding sound bites and respecting voters’ ability to understand issues, Governor Jeb Bush’s health-reform proposal demonstrates strong leadership. Repeal and replace Obamacare? Sure, Bush is for that, but no Republican politician should win points simply by regurgitating what many citizens fear has become little more than a slogan.

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Oct 19, 2015 | 3 comments | by

Peak Obamacare? We’re Almost There

money-burdenThe administration has released a report estimating that enrolment in Obamacare will reach only 9.4 million to 11.4 million at the end of 2016. Back in 2010, when the law was passed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated exchange coverage would be 21 million next year (Table 4).

Why the come down? Obamacare has a miserable take-up rate: Few who do not get significant subsidies sign up. Even worse, many of those who sign up at open enrolment cannot afford the premiums and drop out. Indeed, 15 percent of Obamacare beneficiaries who signed in 2015’s open season (which ended in February) were gone by the end of June. (The New York Times has just published interviews with some struggling to pay their premiums and maintain coverage.)

One year ago, I coined the term “Peak Obamacare” to describe this phenomenon. Although the administration’s cheerleaders have twice celebrated very high Obamacare enrolment during open season, the administration has finally decided to accept reality: We are on the verge of Peak Obamacare.

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Oct 16, 2015 | 1 comment | by

Obamacare COOPs’ Loans Are “Assets”

My colleague Devon Herrick was prescient about the collapse of Obamacare’s COOPs (nonprofit cooperative insurers set up with government loans to compete unfairly in Obamacare’s exchanges), writing an Issue Brief on the topic last June.

Since, then Obamacare’s COOPs have continued to collapse, stranding almost half a million Obamacare beneficiaries. Chris Jacobs of the Conservative Review has written about the administration’s latest attempt to rescue the remaining COOPs, by rebranding their liabilities as “assets”:

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Oct 16, 2015 | 7 comments | by

Jeb Bush’s Health Plan

BushJeb Bush’s health plan is out – and it is very good. Bush leads with fundamental reform of the Food and Drug Administration. “It should not cost $1.2 billion to $2.6 billion nor take 12 to 15 years to advance a medicine from discovery to patients, but that is the case under the Food and Drug Administration’s current regulatory mess.”

In recent weeks, we’ve read stories about drugs that have been around for decades, for which prices have been hiked sky-high. These price hikes are carried out by executives taking advantage of obscure FDA rules that impede competition.

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Oct 13, 2015 | 26 comments | by
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