Yep, sure enough, Humana is following UnitedHealthcare out the door of multiple states next year. That's 1,800 people impacted, although they're all OFF-exchange only:
It's also worth noting that "grandfathered" enrollees only make up around 11% of Humana's total Virginia individual market as of this spring, which is somewhat higher than my overall ballpark estimate of around 1 million nationally.
According to the ASPE report, as of 1/31/16, 200,691 people had selected QHPs via the WA exchange. This is completely consistent with the exchange's own final report of "more than 200,000".
However, according to their March monthly enrollment dashboard report, the Washington HealthplanFinder only had 176,914 people having "Selected a Plan" as of February...and of those, only 156,493 were reported by the carriers as having paid.
That payment rate is a quite reasonable 88.5%, which is slightly lower than my general 90% rule of thumb estiamate nationally but not out of line at all. However, what's the deal with that 177K topline figure? Where did the remaining 23,777 people go?
PHOENIX - The Republican-controlled House on Tuesday refused to restore a federally-funded health insurance program for children that's used by every other state in the country.
House Democrats staged a last-ditch fight to revive the KidsCare program with an amendment to the state budget.
Republicans said allowing the amendment would have "blown up" the state budget, even though the program costs the state nothing.
...Just a few months ago, the House had passed a bill restoring KidsCare with strong bipartisan support. But Senate President Andy Biggs wouldn't give the bill a hearing in his chamber.
An estimated 30,000 children of lower-income working parents would have been covered by KidsCare. The program was suspended by the Legislature during the recession.
The cost of the program is covered by federal dollars at least through 2017 and possibly through 2019.
As previously disclosed, in the fourth quarter of 2015 the company recorded a PDR associated with its 2016 individual commercial ACA‐compliant offerings. Historically, this business has reported a profit in the first quarter of the year due to the related benefit designs. Because the company continues to anticipate a loss associated with this business for the full year 2016, the seasonal earnings generated in 1Q 2016 are offset by an increase in the PDR, resulting in a higher benefit ratio year over year. This first quarter seasonality was anticipated as the company developed its estimate of the full‐year PDR recorded in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Financial results associated with the wind‐down of the non‐ACA compliant (legacy) business, including the related release of policy reserves, as well as indirect administrative costs associated with ACA‐compliant offerings are included in the company’s 1Q 2016 financial results.
A few weeks ago, I got a heads up that Virginia was the first state out of the gate with their 2017 Rate Request filings. There were some confusing numbers which took awhile to sort out, but once the dust settled, the overall weighted average rate hike requests for Virginia's entire ACA-compliant individual market came in at around 17.9%.
Some states make it next to impossible to track down this info. Others hand it to you on a silver plate. And then there are states like Oregon, who provide the average rate hike requests in a simple, easy format, but don't necessarily include the market share of those companies, making it difficult to compile a weighted average:
Back in January I noted that Moda Health Plans, which had plenty of self-inflicted wounds in addition to being kneecapped by the Risk Corridor Massacre, was dropping out of the Oregon exchange and likely the Alaska exchange as well, so today's news isn't a big surprise.
Even so, this is definitely a major problem for the Alaska individual market, which was already extremely expensive prior to the ACA and which now only has a single insurance carrier participating (h/t to Louise Norris):
The individual market in Alaska has just two carriers in 2016: Moda and Premera. Both have struggled with significant losses under the ACA, and Moda nearly exited the Alaska market altogether in late January (more details below).
