OK, this is kind of cool (though I didn't find out about it until 6 months later)...
The link to this site is below the video at the actual YouTube link, and The Graph only onscreen for a second (and is obviously a bit outdated...the effectuated exchange enrollee number is more like 9.9 million as of now), but it's still pretty nifty.
WASHINGTON -- The government's own watchdogs tried to hack into HealthCare.gov earlier this year and found what they termed a critical vulnerability - but also came away with respect for some of the health insurance site's security features.
Those are among the conclusions of a report released Tuesday by the Health and Human Services Department inspector general, who focuses on health care fraud.
The report amounts to a mixed review for the federal website that serves as the portal to taxpayer-subsidized health plans for millions of Americans. Open enrollment season starts Nov. 15.
So-called "white hat" or ethical hackers from the inspector general's office found a weakness, but when they attempted to exploit it like a malicious hacker would, they were blocked by the system's defenses.
I've been debating (pun intended!) how to handle the ongoing 2016 Presidential primary season when it comes to the ACA. While the ACA has barely come up at all in either of the first 2 GOP debates, it's almost certainly going to start popping up sooner or later (and I'll be stunned if it isn't a major topic at the Democratic debates).
I'm gonna try doing an occasional "Candidate Roundup" with the latest ACA-related happenings when it comes to the various candidates...and there have been three major developments this week:
In 2014, there was a tremendous amount of focus placed on whether or not "Obamacare Enrollments" (specifically referring to private ACA exchange enrollments) would or wouldn't hit the seemingly all-powerful target of 7 million people. Hell, the original (and still primary) focus of this website was specifically to do live tracking of private ACA exchange enrollments across all 50 states (+DC).
How did the "7 Million" figure become so all-powerful? As long-time readers (or anyone who remembers the past 2 years) will recall, "7 Million" took on an almost mystical quality. The media, along with detractors and supporters alike, began treating it as a make-or-break number; if the administration was able to hit the 7M mark, all would be well, and if they didn't, the earth would open up and swallow the entire nation whole.
Health Premiums Have Climbed $4,865 Since Obama Promised to Cut Them $2,500
Ouch. Sounds pretty bad, right? President Obama's "I'll cut premiums by $2,500 per family" promise has taken a lot of heat over the years, and rightly so. The figure originated in a back-of-the-envelope projection calculated by economist David Cutler, but referred to total healthcare costs:
We reached out to David Cutler, an economist who advised Obama during the 2008 campaign and helped calculate the $2,500 figure that appeared in Obama's speeches. He said the calculation encompassed total health care costs, not just premiums. These would include out-of-pocket costs, employer-provided insurance costs, and taxes to pay for public insurance programs.
In today's speech at the Howard University College of Medicine, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell started ramping things up for the 2016 Open Enrollment Season (which I'm gonna designate #ACA2016 unless someone else comes up with something better) by dropping some data points.
Among these was this one:
Almost half of the uninsured individuals who are likely eligible for Marketplace plans are between the ages of 18 and 34.
This is really important, because only about 28% of those who enrolled in exchange-based policies this year fall into the 18-34 range, which is a problem from an actuarial/risk pool perspective. Younger people are generally healthier, so the insurance companies prefer to have a higher percentage of them in their risk pools in order to help keep premiums/deductibles from increasing too quickly.
If "almost half" of the 10.5 million uninsured people eligible for the ACA exchanges are in the 18-34 range, that's roughly 5 million young adults who the exchanges need to target.
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:
