Most Mainers buying Affordable Care Act insurance will see modest increases in their premiums for 2016, below the national average and much lower than the double-digit increases projected in some cities by a recent study of initial rate filings.
About 80 percent of the 75,000 Mainers purchasing ACA marketplace insurance have a plan through Lewiston-based Community Health Options – formerly Maine Community Health Options. The ACA marketplace, operated on the Web as healthcare.gov, is where those without insurance – often part-time or self-employed workers – can obtain subsidized benefits.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Line: (916) 206-7777 July 27, 2015
COVERED CALIFORNIA HOLDS RATE INCREASES DOWN FOR SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR
Average Increase Is 4 Percent; Consumers Who Shop Can Lower Their Premium by an Average of 4.5 Percent
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced its rates for 2016 and unveiled which health insurance companies will be offering plans through the marketplace. The statewide weighted average increase will be 4 percent, which is lower than last year’s increase of 4.2 percent and represents a dramatic change from the trends that individuals faced in the years before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
When I last checked in on Pennsylvania's year-late-but-certainly-welcome addition to the ACA Medicaid expansion club, newly inaugurated Governor Tom Wolf was in the process of replacing his predecessor's poorly-conceived, overly-complicated "Conservative version" of the expansion program with "official" Medicaid expansion to up to 600,000 state residents. At the time (early May), they had hit roughly 250,000 people.
I'm happy to report that according to today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the dust has settled on the transition, and enrollment has been on a tear, with the tally now standing at roughly 439,000 Pennsylvanians.
About 439,000 Pennsylvanians have enrolled in expanded Medicaid, which provides health insurance coverage to the poor and disabled, since the beginning of the year, according to figures released last week by the state’s Department of Human Services.
Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account
..and the wording of the passage was changed to this:
"...into whether sensitive government information was mishandled in connection with the personal email account Hillary Rodham Clinton used as secretary of state."
Japanese holdouts (残留日本兵 Zanryū nipponhei?, "remaining Japanese soldiers") or stragglers were Japanese soldiers in the Pacific Theatre who, after the August 1945 surrender of Japan ending World War II, either adamantly doubted the veracity of the formal surrender due to strong dogmatic or militaristic principles, or simply were not aware of it because communications had been cut off by the United States island hopping campaign.
They continued to fight the enemy forces, and later local police, for years after the war was over. Some Japanese holdouts volunteered during the First Indochina War and Indonesian War of Independence, to free Asian colonies from Western control despite these having once been colonial ambitions of Imperial Japan during World War II.
Over the past couple of months, the proposed 2016 individual & small business market premium rate filings have mostly been released. These are requests only, and have yet to be approved by state regulators in most states (Oregon and Kentucky are the only ones I know of which have actually approved theirs so far), but it at least gives us a general idea of where things are likely to stand next year.
News Alert – July 23, 2015
Individual/Consumer Markets
What to Expect for 2106 Open Enrollment Plans
On Monday, the Texas Department of Insurance gave Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas (BCBSTX) the clearance to announce a change in retail product offerings for 2016. We wanted to share this information with you first.
...There are some changes in the plans we intend to offer in 2016. Most significantly, we won’t be offering our Blue Choice PPO insurance plans for our under 65 block of business going forward.
We intend to offer other products, on and off the Marketplace. A new product has been filed that we believe will give you a flexible choice for your clients. We will be able to share information about that product if and when it is approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) closer to open enrollment.
...Currently, we have about 367,000 individual Texas members who will have their PPO plan discontinued in 2016. This number fluctuates monthly.
Hawaii Health Connector offers individual plans from two carriers: BCBS’s Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), and Kaiser Permanente.
For 2016, HMSA has proposed a 45.5 percent rate increase for their individual HMO plan, and nearly a 50 percent rate hike for their individual PPO plan (49.1 percent overall). The carrier justified their rate hikes based on claims costs, explaining that while virtually everyone in Hawaii was already insured, the uninsured pool – many of whom purchased new ACA-compliant plans – had significant medical needs.
Ouch. Yup, that's a pretty ugly requested increase, no way around it.
The following day, Kaiser proposed an 8.7 percent rate increase for their individual market policies.
