I've promised not to reveal the actual number anywhere else until tomorrow, so you'll have to read the full piece to get my call...but I do have some important caveats, disclaimers and additional points which I can make here as well:
*IMPORTANT: This assumes that everyone currently enrolled sticks with their current policy next year. If enough people shop around and consider their options, the average premiums for various plans, various companies, in vartious states and nationally could end up being considerably lower (possibly coming in under 10% overall).
Again: Do not blindly autorenew! Contact your ACA exchange website/call center (or your insurance carrier, if you're enrolled directly through them) and check out your options before committing to your existing plan! In many cases, there will be a different plan which is a better value for you!
At last!! It's been extremely frustrating trying to lock down the 2016 average premium hikes for Pennsylvania, especially because their Insurance Dept. website has actually been very good about posting every requested rate change in an easy-to-read, comprehensive fashion.
The problem with PA's rate filings hasn't been on the percentage change side, it's on the covered lives side. I was able to compile enrollment numbers for some carriers but not others...including First Priority, which was requesting a 29.5% rate hike. Without knowing whether they had a huge chunk of the market or not, posting the "average" rate hikes without including theirs was kind of meaningless, since it could potentially jack that average up or down dramatically.
So, I finally kind of gave up on it, figuring that even when the approved rates were posted, they probably still wouldn't include the number of covered lives for each insurance company.
A quick update from Connecticut: Last month it looked like effectuated QHP enrollment at AccessHealthCT had increased a bit between June and September, from around 92.2K to 96.6K.
However, just moments ago at the AccessHealthCT board meeting, this graph was displayed, showing that effectuated enrollment has actually been dropping off gradually since March, which is actually exactly what you'd normally expect via normal attrition anyway.
In any event, according to this slide, CT currently has 95,601 effectuated QHP enrollees: 71,022 receiving tax credits (74%), 24,579 without (26%), which is down slightly from September. This is right in line with my (revised) national attrition estimates, which should taper off at around 9.7 million effectuated enrollees by the end of the year.
With things ramping up for the 2016 Open Enrollment Period (#OE3), there's not much point in my continuing to track 2015 QHP selections. The June CMS report confirmed that off-season enrollments have been tracking pretty closely to my estimates (slightly higher, actually, although the number later dropped from their plans due to legal residency issues also turned out to be much higher than I had expected).
In general, however, it's been averaging roughly 8,000 - 9,000 new QHP selections per day during the off-season, and will likely continue at about that rate for another few weeks (hitting roughly 13.9 million by the end of October) before tapering off as the 2016 enrollment season kicks into gear. I'm pretty certain that it'll close out the year with around 14 million QHP selections even, of which around 12.6 million will actually be paid for and around 9.7 million will still be enrolled as of the end of December.
With that in mind, here's the last 2015 Graph I'll be posting, which I've also superimposed over the full-year 2014 Graph for comparison (as always, click on the images below for the high-resolution versions):
But yes, Clay County, TN Director of Schools Jerry Strong is indeed blaming the Affordable Care Act for his county's decision to pull the plug on the entire district in the middle of the school year:
The economy is so bad in Clay County, Tennessee that school is canceled indefinitely.
The decision to ebb budget concerns by shutting academic doors came down on Thursday when Clay County Director of Schools Jerry Strong quite literally decided to lock the doors of the county’s schools. He was particularly concerned with partially unfunded government mandates and what he believed to be the effects of Obamacare making it impossible to keep funds in the green.
By contrast, the damage from the Risk Corridor program being crippled is specific, quantifiable and obvious: Company X lost $22 million in 2014; they were supposed to receive $20 million (or whatever) back in risk corridor reimbursements; the CMS dept. only has $2.5 million to pay them back with, period, so they have to eat the remaining $17.5 million loss until next year or the year after...if they're able to stick it out that long.
The Kentucky Health CO-OP couldn't stick it out that long...and it's possible that similar press releases may be forthcoming for a few other CO-OPs (and/or other smaller insurers) over the next week or so.
Republican lawmakers in Utah voted in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday to shelve a plan to provide health care for about 95,000 of the state’s poor.
After months of negotiations earlier this year, the Health Reform Task Force unveiled a scaled down of the Healthy Utah plan for Medicaid expansion called Utah Access Plus. Under the new plan, the federal government would pick up about $450 million. An additional $50 million would be funded by taxes on doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other medical providers.
On Tuesday, the Republican caucus gathered behind closed doors to determine whether it would allow the new proposal to move forward. According to KUER, lawmakers decided to kill the plan, leaving the future of Medicaid expansion uncertain in Utah.
Strike That: Apparently the Republicans immediately followed up crushing the spirits of 95,000 of their fellow Utahns by...eating birthday cake.
President Barack Obama's landmark health care reform law -- one of the most contentious political issues of the past six years -- received all but no attention during the Democratic debate Tuesday tonight. But considering that all five Democrats on the stage were supporters of the Affordable Care Act, perhaps it's not surprising that CNN opted to raise issues more likely to provoke confrontation.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to write about most of that today, as I'm concentrating exclusively on a Special Project: My Official 2016 Open Enrollment Projection piece...which isn't quite ready yet.
It's fitting that I'm working on that story today, however...because today happens to also be the 2nd anniversary of this website!
