I stumbled across an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer today which makes a rather odd claim in both the headline and the lede:

State sites outperform U.S. marketplace in Affordable Care Act signups

States running their own Affordable Care Act marketplaces enrolled more people in health insurance than those using the federal marketplace, according to an analysis by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Leonard Davis Institute.

Given the federal Website's dreadful October launch, that isn't exactly jaw-dropping news. But Penn's Health Insurance Exchange researchers were surprised to find that even after Healthcare.gov began working well in December, state-based marketplaces kept outperforming the federal site.

Huh. Interesting. They even specified that this was true "even after December".

Of course, there's a very good reason why they would be "surprised" at this finding...it's not even remotely close to being true.

Regular followers of this site know that I'm primarily a bean counter, concerned mainly with tracking the numbers and plugging them into spreadsheets and graphs.

However, there's another side to the ACA story which is extremely important, and which I tend not to give enough attention to, and that's the human factor.

Sources like Amy Lynn Smith and ACASuccessStories have been doing their best to put a human face on what the Affordable Care Act means for real people with real healthcare needs, and I've mentioned or given a shout-out to these and other "tell your story" writers from time to time. However, it was 3 completely unrelated incidents which inspired me to write this entry.

I received the following email from someone regarding small group insurance policies out of Minnesota (emphasis mine):

Maybe not useful to you, but an insurance agent in MN told me he just got quotes for his first three 2015 group coverage renewals: -7.5%, -2.5%, -7.5%.

He's slightly shocked.

I asked if he could provide some further details; so far this is as much as he's able to add:

...He's rural, so those are likely group plans for small businesses, maybe a small school system.  Recent changes have been +8-24%,  so this is a gigantic change.

Three more quick hits...the third one really deserves its own entry, but frankly, I'm too exhausted today and want to get it off the books, so...

Vermont: STATE SIGNS $9.5 MILLION CONTRACT EXPANDING ROLE OF OPTUM IN HEALTH CARE EXCHANGE

Vermont signed a revised contract with the tech firm Optum that expands its role in Vermont Health Connect’s operations.

Optum already had a contract worth $5.6 million for consulting work, and the latest deal, signed Aug. 15, is worth an additional $9.5 million for a total of $15.1 million.

 

...At latest count, Optum has helped the state halve its backlog of coverage changes and information errors from a high of more than 14,000 to roughly 7,000. Also, close to 4,000 people are having billing issues with Vermont Health Connect. There is some overlap between the two groups, Miller said.

Minnesota exchange gets new marketers

The news that MNsure is switching to a new ad team isn't that noteworthy, but check out the reasoning (in bold):

Three ACA-related stories which are all interesting but which I don't have a whole lot to add to:

The trouble with trying to sign people up for health insurance when care is already free

It’s hard work trying to get people to sign up for health insurance when their care is mostly free to them. Andrea Thomas is working to get Alaska Natives in Sitka, Alaska, to do just that. She’s the outreach and enrollment manager at SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC), and it’s her job to sign people up for health insurance coverage through exchanges created as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

To get a sense of just how uphill Thomas’s battle is, consider this: Of the more than 100,000 people who live in Alaska and self-identify as Alaska Native or American Indian, only 115 had signed up for health insurance through an Affordable Care Act exchange as of March 31.  Alaska Natives and American Indians are exempt from tax penalties for not signing up for health insurance.

This Just In (busy day today)...

Commissioner Approves Premium Rates for 2015 Individual Market

(Baltimore) – Maryland Insurance Commissioner Therese M. Goldsmith today announced approved premium rates for individual health insurance plans to be offered in the State for coverage beginning January 1, 2015.

Premium rates for three of the six carriers currently participating in Maryland’s individual insurance market – All Savers Insurance Company, Evergreen Health Cooperative, and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States, Inc. − will drop by an average of 6.7 percent, 10.3 percent, and 14.1 percent, respectively. The other three carriers currently in the market, all CareFirst companies, received approval to increase premium rates by 9.8 percent (CareFirst BlueChoice, Inc.) or 16.2 percent (CareFirst of Maryland, Inc. and Group Hospitalization and Medical Services, Inc.), on average − substantial reductions from the 22.8 percent and 30.2 percent increases those companies requested for 2015.

Thanks to contributor Britt M. for sending me both of the above links.

Between the recent campaign ad by AR Senator Mark Pryor defending his ACA vote (if not actually uttering the "O" word), the good-to-excellent 2015 premium news out of states like Arkansas, California, Connecticut and Mississippi, as well as the recent polling out of CA which finds a spike in approval of the law, it's no wonder that even hard-right Tea Party politicos like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker may be considering setting up their own ACA exchanges after all if they have to:

Watching the tide turn quickly on ‘Obamacare’

About a year ago, Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens bragged to a crowd of fellow Republicans: “Let me tell you what we’re doing [about ObamaCare]: Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”
 
It was a striking quote that quickly took on national significance. As a rule, policymakers at least pretend to care about working constructively, but here was a state official boasting about his deliberate embrace of obstructionism.
 
And yet, this week, Hudgens said he didn’t really mean it.

“I spoke to a Republican group in Rome, Ga., and I said I was going to be an obstructionist, but I can’t be. I mean, I was talking to a Republican group and I was throwing them some red meat.”

ATTENTION DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES...

OK, a couple of caveats here: First, yes, it's California; obviously this isn't exactly representative of states like, say, Oklahoma or Alabama. Second, CoveredCA had a much smoother rollout last fall than HC.gov did (and some of the other state exchanges are still struggling with serious technical issues).

Having said all that, California does still have over 12% of the total U.S. population, and they do tend to be early adopters historically. With that in mind...

The nation’s new health care law is surging in popularity in the Golden State, according to the Field Poll, which finds more Californians today — of all political stripes — support the Affordable Care Act than at any time since it was signed into law four years ago.

And by a two-to-one margin, they praise the successful way it’s been rolled out in the state, compared to the federal government’s glitch-ridden system.

Still more now say they’re satisfied with the way the health care system is working in the state, compared to a year ago.

Wow. The logic here is just...wow:

Low-income consumers struggling to pay their Obamacare premiums may soon be able to get help from their local hospital or United Way.

Some hospitals in New York, Florida and Wisconsin are exploring ways to provide such aid, which would at least partly guarantee the hospitals get paid when the consumers seek care.

But the hospitals' efforts have set up a conflict with insurers, which worry such programs will add too many sick people to their rolls. The premium assistance could drive up costs for everyone and discourage healthier people from buying coverage, insurers wrote recently to the Obama administration.

Think about that one for a moment.

The hospitals (you know, the ones who are supposed to help heal the sick) are offering to help pay the insurance companies for patients who can't afford it otherwise...and the insurance companies are actually opposed to this...because it might add "too many sick people" to their customer base.