Oregon

In the middle of a deadly global pandemic which has already killed more than 100,000 Americans and completely disrupted the entire U.S. healthcare system, private insurance carriers still have to go about preparing their annual premium rate change filings for 2021. This is a long, complicated process which begins a good nine months before the new plans and prices are actually enrolled in.

The task of setting 2020 premiums was the first time since the ACA went into effect which was relatively calm for insurance carrier actuaries:

Michigan:

Governor Whitmer Announces Statewide Closure of All K-12 School Buildings; School building closures will last Monday, March 16 through Sunday, April 5

Today, Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that in order to slow the spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Michigan, she is ordering the closure of all K-12 school buildings, public, private, and boarding, to students starting Monday, March 16 until Sunday, April 5. School buildings are scheduled to reopen on Monday, April 6. 

As of tonight, the number of presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 in Michigan is 12. 

I noted yesterday that Virginia is the latest state to consider jumping onboard the State-Based Exchange train, joining Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine and possibly Oregon in making the move. Every time I've mentioned Oregon, however, I've had to put a bit of an asterisk on it because I wasn't quite sure whether or not their shift back to their own full tech platform was still a go or not.

Like Nevada, Oregon did have their own full exchange once upon a time. Back in the first ACA Open Enrollment Period from 2013-2014, both states were among those which ran their own exchange websites. Nevada's was developed by Xerox; Oregon's was developed by Oracle.

MLR rebate payments for 2018 are being sent out to enrollees even as I type this. The data for 2018 MLR rebates won't be officially posted for another month or so, but I've managed to acquire it early, and after a lot of number-crunching the data, I've recompiled it into an easy-to-read format.

But that's not all! In addition to the actual 2018 MLR rebates, I've gone one step further and have taken an early crack at trying to figure out what 2019 MLR rebates might end up looking like next year (for the Individual Market only). In order to do this, I had to make several very large assumptions:

Not much of an entry, but still: A month ago, the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation posted the requested 2020 rate changes for the Individual and Small Group health insurance markets: 3.3% on average for the Indy market, 8.7% for the sm. group market.

Today, after reviewing the requests from the insurance carriers, the department has posted their "semi-final" rates. These may still see some additional tweaking before the final, approved rates are locked in, but the odds are that these will be the final rates:

Salem — Oregonians can now see the state’s preliminary rate decisions for 2020 individual and small employer health insurance plans. The Division of Financial Regulation must review and approve any rates before they can be charged to policyholders.

Preliminary rate decisions are for individuals who buy their own coverage rather than getting it through an employer and for small businesses.

This actually happened back in March but I missed it at the time:

Lawmaker proposes Medicaid buy-in and individual mandate for Oregonians

Representative Andrea Salinas, the new Chair of the House Health Care Committee, recently filed a bill that aims to establish a Medicaid buy-in option for Oregon residents. The bill, HB 2009, would also establish a “shared responsibility penalty,” or an individual mandate for Oregonians.

HB 2009 would essentially allow individuals who do not qualify for Medicaid, or for premium tax credits under the Affordable Care Act, to enroll in CCOs by paying premiums to cover their health services.

(Note: "CCOs" = "Coordinated Care Organizations", which I believe is how Oregon designates their Medicaid program.)

Initial filings reveal stabilization as rate review season kicks off

Salem, OR—Oregon consumers can get a first look at requested rates for 2020 individual and small group health insurance plans.

In the individual market, seven companies submitted rate change requests ranging from an average 3.2 percent decrease to an average 13.5 percent increase, for an average of 3.3 percent. In the small group market, nine companies submitted rate change requests ranging from an average 0.3 percent decrease to an average 13.1 percent increase, for an average of 8.7 percent. See the chart for the full list of rate change requests.

“It’s early in the process, but we are encouraged to see carriers providing more options to Oregonians by expanding into both rural and coastal communities, and the market stabilizing in spite of uncertainty at the federal level,” said Insurance Commissioner Andrew Stolfi. “Now it is time to start our open and thorough review process that allows Oregonians to provide input on the filings that affect them.”

Just a few minutes ago I noted that the state of Oregon is once again strongly considering taking a second crack at establishing their own, fully state-based ACA exchange after spending the past five years piggybacking on top of HealthCare.Gov.

Well, the Oregon State Public Interest Research Group just published an extensive report in which they urge the state to do just that...along with several other key changes which I also strongly agree with:

Steps like a mandate for Oregon residents to buy health insurance and relief for exchange customers who earn too much to receive tax credits under the Affordable Care Act could help reverse premium hikes that have shot up amid attempts by the Trump administration to roll back the law, OSPIRG, the Oregon State Public Interest Group, argued in a report released Wednesday.

There are 12 states which operate their own full ACA exchanges, including their own board of directors, marketing budget, bylaws and tech platform for their enrollment website. 34 states have offloaded just about all of that to the federal exchange, HealthCare.Gov.

And then there are five states which are in between: They have their own state-based exchange...but their tech platform is basically piggybacked onto the federal exchange: Arkansas, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon.

Nevada and Oregon had such major technical problems at launch that they scrapped their sites after the first year and moved to the Mothership. Hawaii also scrapped their exchange site after the second or third year, but they shut down their entirestate-based exchange and moved everything to HC.gov). Nevada announced that they're giving their own full exchange a second shot this November.

I noted a few weeks ago that the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation had issued their preliminary rulings on 2019 individual and small group market rate filings. At the time, they had whittled down the average requested indy market rate changes from 10.5% down to 7.8%, while leaving the requested small group rate changes the same (around 5-6% on average).

However, they also made sure to note that there was still one more round of reviews to go through before final, approved 2019 rate changes were locked in. Yesterday the OR DFR came out with those, making only slight further changes on the individual market (they bumped Kaiser up by 0.2 points while lowering Providence by 1.1 points). Providence has twice as many enrollees as Kaiser, so this resulted in an overall, weighted statewide average rate increase of 7.3%.

The final small group market rates were changed a bit more--Providence's increase was cut in half, while UnitedHealthcare's hike was cut by a couple of points.

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