Secretary Burwell outlined the following key facts about Marketplace eligible uninsured:
About 10.5 million uninsured Americans are eligible for Marketplace coverage in the upcoming open enrollment.
While HHS will work to bolster enrollment across the nation, the Department’s top five target areas for outreach are Dallas, Houston, northern New Jersey, Chicago, and Miami – which are home to the highest numbers of uninsured who are eligible for Marketplace coverage.
Almost half of the uninsured individuals who are likely eligible for Marketplace plans are between the ages of 18 and 34.
Almost 40 percent of the uninsured who qualify for Marketplace plans are living between 139 and 250 percent of the federal poverty level (about $34,000 to $61,000 for a family of four).
Approximately one-third of the uninsured who qualify for Marketplace plans are people of color: approximately 19 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are African American, and 2 percent are Asian American.
Secretary Burwell also described additional takeaways about the uninsured:
About half of the uninsured have less than $100 in savings.
Nearly three in five of the uninsured are either confused about how the tax credits work or don’t know that they are available.
At the time, I stated that as much of a supporter as I am of the ACA, I was a bit uneasy with this particular estimate, mainly due to the 2.3 million "Young Adults on Parents Plan" portion of it:
The first thing you'll notice right off the bat is that I'm treating the "additional" 2.3 million young adults in the second bullet point as a sort of afterthought.
This is not because I think that these people "don't count". Anyone who's been reading this site since I launched it a year and a half ago knows that I touted the "Sub26ers" as much as possible for the better part of a year.
Although nearly half of the country is covered by it, and the Affordable Care Act does impact it, I don't write much about Employer-Sponsored Insurance (ESI); there's a lot of facets to the ACA, and my main focus has obviously been primarily on the Individual Market (both on and off-exchange) as well as Medicaid (both expansion and "woodworkers").
Today, however, there are two big developments which relate directly to ESI:
When it comes to the Cadillac Tax, I know that it's supposed to help curb overall healthcare costs. I know that it's extremely unpopular with unions (which are obviously one of Clinton's core target constituencies). I know that it's supposed to be one of the main revenue sources for funding the rest of the ACA. Beyond that, I don't know much about it.
Economists love the idea of limiting the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage. For one thing, subsidizing employer-based care is regressive — it's a tax subsidy paid, in effect, by people who don't have good jobs that give them health care. But perhaps more important, it encourages employers to spend more and more money on lavish health insurance, which in turn pushes up health-care costs across the system.
...But voters? They hate it. And employers really hate it. Coalitions have sprung up in Washington, DC, for the sole purpose of killing it. Hundreds of legislators on both sides of the aisle have backed a bill to repeal it. It's become one of Obamacare's central weaknesses — and thus one of the GOP's main targets.
That, however, is not the main point of this entry. This is:
Over at Forbes, virulently anti-ACA critics Josh Archambault and Jonathan Ingram have written a detailed analysis of What Went Wrong with Iowa's implementation of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion provision. While their tone is understandably hostile, from what I know of the situation, it seems to check out for the most part (granted, the only part of this piece I knew much about until now was the CoOportunity failure portion of it).
First, it's important to understand that Arkansas is not the only state which has been using a "private option" solution for their ACA Medicaid expansion program; Iowa opted for this as well. For some reason, Arkansas is the only state ever mentioned when this comes up, probably because they were the first ones to do so, I believe:
Iowa’s expansion was loosely modeled afterArkansas’ Obamacare expansion. Under Iowa’s “Marketplace Choice” waiver, able-bodied adults above the poverty line would receive Medicaid benefits through Obamacare exchange plans.
I've spent tons of time the past few months obsessing over the average percentageincrease in monthly premiums for ACA-compliant individual market policy enrollees, and as I wrap up this project, I've concluded that, assuming EVERYONE sticks with their current policies and doesn't bother shopping around, the overall national average increase will likely end up being between 11-15%.
However, aside from a few hypothetical examples, I haven't even touched on what this means in terms of the actual dollar amounts.
This is no small thing. "Percentage" changes can be very misleading, if you don't know what the actual dollar figure is in the first place. Consider this:
When patients need simple health care, they can get impatient about having to wait.
That’s prompted more health care systems to stress convenience.
This month, North Memorial Health Care will open two easy-access clinics in new Hy-Vee grocery stores in New Hope and Oakdale, hoping that shoppers might add treatment for warts, fever and other ailments to their grocery lists.
The resurgence of retail health clinics by hospital operators comes as they also pump money into online programs that let patients tap into care through computers and smartphones without leaving home.
This one is a heck of an eye-opener, considering the ongoing technical problems Vermont has had with their exchange website...
As always, once you're into the off-season, the total number of QHP selections is more of a symbolic milestone than anything, since the effectuated number is more significant...but it's the selections which cancel out attrition (whether voluntary, in the case of people not paying their premiums or moving on to other coverage; or involuntary, in the case of the several hundred thousand people kicked off of their policies due to legal residency verification issues).
I honestly thought that was the end of his story, but back in late August out of curiosity, I did check in on his GoFundMe page and found a link to a rather interesting, if belated correction over at the Charlotte Observer (the newspaper which posted his story in the first place):
For months now, regular readers know I've spent countless hours crunching the numbers in an attempt to figure out the national, weighted average rate increases for individual health insurance market premiums. I've dug into the numbers for just about every state, filling in hard data where I can and making educated guestimates where I couldn't.
For instance, If I found a state where I was able to get a hard weighted average of, say, a 15% increase for 50% of their market, but didn't know what increase the other 50% had been approved for other than it being "less than 10%", I've been assuming around 7% for the missing half, giving a total weighted average of (0.15 x 0.5) + (0.07 x 0.5) = 0.075 + 0.035 = 0.11 = 11.0%.
A couple of weeks ago, my post on Indiana's average 2016 rate increases on the individual market would likely be very close to flat, based on partial enrollment data (i.e., they provided the rate data for every insurance company, but enrollment data for only one of them). The one company they provided enrollment information for, Physicians Health Plan, also happens to have the highest average rate hike, 13.5%.
However, I noted that since a) Physicians only holds around 4% of Indiana's market, and b) several of the other companies were approved for rate decreases (up to -19% for Mdwise Marketplace), it's entirely possible that the state could be looking at an overall rate decrease, or a very low increase at worst. I decided to split the difference and go with a flat zero percent change until further notice.
