Holy guacamole. I've noted repeatedly that unlike last fall, when average rate increases of 20-30% or more were commonplace for ACA individual market policies (due mainly to Trump cutting off CSR reimbursement payments), the preliminary rate requests for 2019 are actually averageing quite a bit lower than originally expected; of the 20 or so states I've crunched the numbers for so far, the weighted average for unsubsidized premium hikes is hovering around the 10% mark.
At first glance, it may sound like Democrats have been overplaying their hand when it comes to the "individual mandate repeal/short-term plan expansion is causing massive hikes!" attack. However, the rate increases from deliberate sabotage are happening...they're just being partly cancelled out by other factors, including:
The short version is that they tried to make it look as though only 10.3 million of the 12.2 million people who selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) from the ACA exchanges actually paid their first month's premium and were actually enrolled (i.e., "effectuated"), or around 84%. They then tried using this "fact" as evidence of how the ACA was failing, etc etc, because this was supposedly down from 2016 levels.
The difference, as I noted at the time, is that the 2016 effectuation numbers were as of March, while the 2017 effectuation numbers were as of February. This made a big difference, because around 500,000 people who enrolled during 2017 Open Enrollment couldn't have been effectuated for February...because about half a million people enrolled between Jan. 16th - Jan. 31st, which meant their policies weren't even scheduled to begin until March.
When the ACA exchanges first launched for the 2014 Open Enrollment Period, the law included three individual market stabilization programs. One of the programs was called reinsurance, and as far as I know it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, the federal ACA reinsurance program sunsetted after only three years, at the end of 2016, which is part of why rates spiked so much in 2017 (they shot up in most states in 2018 as well, but for very different reasons).
In response, several states (Alaska, Minnesota and Oregon) have enacted their own, state-level reinsurance programs, and several more are on the way (New Jersey, Maryland and Wisconsin). It's a fairly cut & dried way of keeping premiums down (or even lowering them in some cases) which requires no additional federal spending and much less state spending than you would think.
I never thought I'd be quoting or linking to anything published by the ultra-conservative American Action Forum, and yet here we are:
How A Trade War With China Will Impact U.S. Health Care Costs
Jacqueline Varas, Tara O'Neill Hayes
...This report examines the overall effect of these tariffs specifically on U.S. health care. On the most recent lists are an array of medical equipment, including items such as MRI machines, X-ray machines, and surgical instruments. AAF identified 55 products on the tariff lists that can be classified as medical equipment.
Last week I noted that after slashing the marketing budget for HealthCare.Gov, by a whopping 90% (from $100 million to just $10 million) and cutting the Open Enrollment Period itself in half (from 3 months to just 6 weeks) and cutting the navigator/outreach budget by 41% (from $59 million down to $36 million), Trump's CMS Dept. was "considering" slashing the navigator budget for 2019 down further yet:
The Trump administration is considering cutting funding for ObamaCare outreach groups that help people enroll in coverage, sources say.
An initial proposal by the administration would have cut the funding for the groups, known as "navigators," from $36 million last year to $10 million this year. Sources say that proposal now could be walked back, and it is possible funding could remain the same as last year, but it is unclear where the final number will end up.
Later I noted that his primary opponent, former State Senator and County Prosecutor Gretchen Whitmer, has far thinner responses posted on her website when it comes to healthcare policy. I also noted that there are some good reasons for this which likely have nothing to do with being "a tool of the insurance lobby", a "neoliberal sellout" bla bla bla and so forth.
However, for the record, yes, Ms. Whitmer does indeed support universal healthcare coverage, as shown in the Q&A video clip above from one of her town hall appearances (thanks to Mary Bernadette Minnick Weatherly for the clip and the OK to repost it).
Below is a verbatim transcript of the whole exchange:
However, before the actual table breaking out all the carriers by state and how much each owes/is owed, the report includes some other interesting wonky data stuff about 2017 enrollment. Most of it wasn't of much interest to me, but one bar graph caught my eye:
Gov. David Ige signed a new law on Thursday that ensures certain benefits under the Affordable Care Act will be preserved under Hawaii law.
Senate Bill 2340 retains several of the measures introduced in the Obama-era legislation, also known as Obamacare, including a clause that allows Hawaii adults up to 26 years-old to continue receiving health insurance under their parents.
The law also prohibits health insurance organizations from excluding coverage to those with preexisting conditions, or using an individual's gender to determine premiums or contributions to health insurance plans.
I admit to not knowing a whole lot about how Maryland's "All-Payer" system works aside from every payer (Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance) having to pay the same amount for the same services at a given hospital. Here's a general summary from Wikipedia:
All-payer rate setting is a price setting mechanism in which all third parties pay the same price for services at a given hospital. The system does not imply that charges are the same for every hospital. It can be used to increase the market power of payers (such as private and/or public insurance companies) to mitigate inflation in health care costs. All-payer characteristics are found in the health systems of France, Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands. Maryland also uses such a model.
This morning, CMS released the 2017 Risk Adjustment Summary Report for the Individual, Catastrophic and Small Group markets. As I noted at the time, the total amount of money we're talking about being shifted around here is around $10.4 billion, with around $7.5 billion in the individual market, $2.9 billion in the small group market and just $42 million in the catastrophic market.
However...this isn't actually a matter of insurance carriers being owed $10.4 billion. Because of how Risk Adjustment (RA) works, it's actually half as much as that--around $5.2 billion is owed by some carriers to other carriers.
