Long-time readers will remember that throughout the 2014 Open Enrollment period, there was much fuss and bother made by both the Obama administration, the HHS Dept., myself and some ACA detractors over the "sub26er" population: Young adults aged from 19-25 years old who are covered by their parents policies thanks to provisions in the Affordable Care Act requiring all new policies issued since 2010 to allow this.
During the fall of 2013, leading up to the ill-fated launch of the exchanges, the HHS Dept. kept throwing around a hard number to hype up the "sub26er" factor: 3.1 million, which actually came from this ASPE Issue Brief from back in June 2012:
There are 29.7 million adults in this age group, as of the most recent Census data (see Footnote 6). There was a 10.4% increase in insured young adults (64.4% to 74.8%) from Q3 2010 to Q4 2011 (Table 8). 10.4% of 29.7 million is 3.1 million young adults...
The Kaiser Family Foundation released another new, comprehensive national survey today about post-King v. Burwell awareness & opinion, as well as opinions on the ACA as a whole now that the KvB case is (finally) behind us. The poll was conducted after the decision, from 6/25 - 6/29 of over 1,200 adults across all 50 states; full methodology here.
Most of the results are interesting but not terribly surprising; while awareness of KvB rose after the SCOTUS decision, 61% of the public still didn't know much or anything about it, and the fact that 62% approved of the decision is pretty much what is pretty much in line with their earlier poll, where 63% of the public said that if the Supreme Court ruled for the plaintiffs, Congress should pass a simple law restoring tax credits to the 34 states in question. Basically, 62-63% just wanted this idiotic "problem" to be fixed one way or the other so we could move on to something else. As the Kaiser survey itself put it, after the decision "few expressed strong emotions" over it one way or the other; 66% were either "satisfied but meh" or "disappointed but meh" about the decision.
However, it's actually the very last question which caught my eye, and I was a bit surprised that Kaiser gave it so little attention.
With just over a day left before a government shutdown, the legislature passed a final budget on Monday evening. The Washington budget included $110 million in funding for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange. The funding level, and how it is allocated, is nearly identical to the House proposal released last week.
President Barack Obama will discuss his signature health care law Wednesday at Taylor Stratton Elementary School in Madison.
Although the closed event is at a school, Obama chose a city local leaders frequently tout as the health care capital of the country for his latest speech on the Affordable Care Act.
Also hot off the presses, Nick Budnick at the Oregonian reports that OR is the first state to approve final 2016 individual market policy rates. Since Oregon is not allowing "transitional" policies for 2016 (they gave a 1 year extension vs. the 2-3 that some states allowed), this should apply to all individual policies state-wide (as well as small group policies):
More than 220,000 Oregonians who buy their own health insurance will face higher premiums next year, and Portlanders could see some of the biggest hikes in the country.
State regulators have announced the 2016 rates for people who aren't covered by their employers or government programs.
The overall news is not good for consumers. Some insurers had asked the state to approve rates similar to last year's lowest. But many insurers lost money from unexpectedly high costs, so officials proposed raising many rates in preliminary decisions two weeks ago. The final decisions issued Wednesday resulted in a slightly better range of options for consumer.
New ObamaCare enrollees are healthier and spent less on drugs than enrollees last year, according to a new analysis.
The report from Express Scripts, the country’s largest pharmacy benefits manager, is a positive sign for the law, given the need to maintain a mix of healthy and sick enrollees to keep costs down.
Still, ObamaCare exchange enrollees tended to be sicker than those in other health plans. Costs were 16 percent higher per member per month compared to non-ObamaCare plans, the report finds, largely due to higher spending on costly drugs for complex conditions.
The encouraging sign for the law is that the number of new enrollees who used at least one prescription medication declined 18 percent in the first quarter of 2015. Costs were 36 percent lower per member per month compared to the first quarter of 2014.
Way back in January, when the King v. Burwell brouhaha was starting to heat up (yes, it had been a possibility since last summer, but the Supreme Court didn't actually agree to hear the case until the end of last year), I posted the following:
Yup. 5-6 million customers across 37 states will suddenly be unable to afford their shiny new policies, and at the same time will no longer be legally required to have them. Many of them will thus drop their coverage, meaning quite a few insurance companies would lose upwards of 70-80% of their customer base.
Furthermore, the other 20-30% would likely have a much higher percentage of people with truly serious medical issues, in turn causing the very "death spiral" of increasing premiums which ACA opponents claimed would happen if the law operated under the current situation (but which never happened).
In other words, the "death spiral" didn't happen the way they thought it would, so they're making damned sure that it DOES happen by tearing the law apart any way they can.
Earlier this evening I received the following email. I'm not including the sender's identifying information for obvious reasons:
Someone from this website contacted me to help with enrolling in health insurance. They created an account on healthcare.gov with an id of XXXXXXXX@acasignup.net instead of my email address and did not give me the password. I am trying to make some changes to my healthcare coverage and update my information.
I am very concerned with the safety of my information. I thought they were from the health insurance marketplace.
If you could change my id to my email and give me the password I would very much appreciate it.
If not I will assume you are an identity thief and contact the FBI.
On the one hand, this isn't nearly as big of a shock to me as it wsa when Michigan hit 600,000 enrollees (a full 100K higher than earlier eligibility estimates).
On the other hand, 36,000 more people covered than you expected is still 36,000 more people covered!
As you can see from the NM Medicaid enrollment report below (click on it to see the full-size version), as of the end of March, New Mexico was up to 205,901 people enrolled specifically in the ACA expansion program. According to the NM Human Services Dept., the state was only expecting around 170,000 people total to even be eligible.
Of course, that was in March. According to their latest projections from May, they estimate expansion enrollment has reached around 222,000 as of today...and are now projecting it to reach over 241,000 by next June. If that proves accurate, they'll have enrolled nearly 42% more people than expected.
Here's your chance to explain whether this is Good or Bad news.
You may recall that in early May, Rebecca Stob, an actuary iin Washington State, wrote a guest post explaining why a new Standard & Poors report which had just come out was a bit troubling but no cause for major alarm (yet). It basically has to do with the "Three R's" put in place by the ACA (Risk Adjustment, Reinsurance and Risk Corridors) for insurance companies to help smooth the transition from the pre-ACA world over the first few years.
In her post, Stob referred to the fact that:
2014 results are still uncertain for the other 2Rs. What is reported in insurer's financial statements are still estimates and insurers won't know the results from risk adjustment and reinsurance until they get the final report in June.
Well, it's the last day of June, and sure enough, look what was just released...
