I've had no fewer than a dozen different people call my attention to a story in the New York Times last Friday by Robert Pear which lays out the dramatic 2016 rate increase requests from various insurance companies across multiple states:
Health insurance companies around the country are seeking rate increases of 20 percent to 40 percent or more, saying their new customers under the Affordable Care Act turned out to be sicker than expected. Federal officials say they are determined to see that the requests are scaled back.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans — market leaders in many states — are seeking rate increases that average 23 percent in Illinois, 25 percent in North Carolina, 31 percent in Oklahoma, 36 percent in Tennessee and 54 percent in Minnesota, according to documents posted online by the federal government and state insurance commissioners and interviews with insurance executives.
(sigh) Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the risk pool...
Now that the dumbest lawsuit ever to make it to the United States Supreme Court has been kicked to the curb, you might think that it's smooth sailing for the Affordable Care Act, at least legislatively-speaking. You would, of course, be wrong:
The Obama administration and House Republicans are clashing over the healthcare law in court, with the Justice Department blasting a GOP lawsuit as "unprecedented."
House Republicans are suing President Obama over what they call executive overreach, saying Obama is unconstitutionally spending money on an ObamaCare program Congress declined to appropriate money for.
The Obama administration counters it does not need an appropriation because the funds were made permanent and mandatory by the Affordable Care Act. The funds in question are for “cost-sharing reductions” that help insurers lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income people.
As we head into the holiday weekend, and with King v. Burwell finally in the rearview mirror (thank God...and the Supreme Court), it's time once more to update The Graph.
As you can see, assuming appx. 7,500 QHP selections per day nationally during the off-season, the grand total for 2015 should be crossing the 12.8 million mark right about...NOW. (OK, give or take a week or so...it's possible that things slowed down considerably in the days leading up to the King v. Burwell decision due to all the uncertainty...on the other hand, there might have been a mini-surge this week as a bunch newly-married same-sex couples signed up. Who knows?
Back in April, the HHS Dept. provided a massive Excel file containing total 2015 QHP selections across the 37 states run through Healthcare.Gov, broken out by Zip Code.
By digging into the weeds and doing some serious data-crunching, you can get all sorts of interesting info. For instance, Families USA was able to figure out just how many people were at risk of losing their federal tax credits in each individual Congressional District in the 34 states which were at risk from King v. Burwell, and so forth.
As I noted last week, now that the King v. Burwell debacle is behind us, all options are on the table for the future of the 13 remaining "full" state-based exchanges (Hawaii is in the process of moving over to Healthcare.Gov for 2016, joining Oregon and Nevada). The two additional state exchanges most likely to make the move are Vermont (which is having both serious technical and funding issues) and Minnesota (where neither issue is quite as bad, but still troubling). The other 11 exchanges are in considerably better shape on the technical side, but the financing situation varies widely.
Fortunately, it looks like at least one state exchange has turned the corner, or at least is pretty confident that they're about to: The largest one in the country, Covered California. They just released a report at the Alliance for Health Reform forum; for the most part it's a general overview of CoveredCA's 2015 enrollment situation, rehashing data which was already known (1.3 million currently enrolled, etc.) However, there's a few noteworthy slides which fill out the picture more completely.
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.
