New ObamaCare enrollees are healthier and spent less on drugs than enrollees last year, according to a new analysis.
The report from Express Scripts, the country’s largest pharmacy benefits manager, is a positive sign for the law, given the need to maintain a mix of healthy and sick enrollees to keep costs down.
Still, ObamaCare exchange enrollees tended to be sicker than those in other health plans. Costs were 16 percent higher per member per month compared to non-ObamaCare plans, the report finds, largely due to higher spending on costly drugs for complex conditions.
The encouraging sign for the law is that the number of new enrollees who used at least one prescription medication declined 18 percent in the first quarter of 2015. Costs were 36 percent lower per member per month compared to the first quarter of 2014.
Way back in January, when the King v. Burwell brouhaha was starting to heat up (yes, it had been a possibility since last summer, but the Supreme Court didn't actually agree to hear the case until the end of last year), I posted the following:
Yup. 5-6 million customers across 37 states will suddenly be unable to afford their shiny new policies, and at the same time will no longer be legally required to have them. Many of them will thus drop their coverage, meaning quite a few insurance companies would lose upwards of 70-80% of their customer base.
Furthermore, the other 20-30% would likely have a much higher percentage of people with truly serious medical issues, in turn causing the very "death spiral" of increasing premiums which ACA opponents claimed would happen if the law operated under the current situation (but which never happened).
In other words, the "death spiral" didn't happen the way they thought it would, so they're making damned sure that it DOES happen by tearing the law apart any way they can.
Earlier this evening I received the following email. I'm not including the sender's identifying information for obvious reasons:
Someone from this website contacted me to help with enrolling in health insurance. They created an account on healthcare.gov with an id of XXXXXXXX@acasignup.net instead of my email address and did not give me the password. I am trying to make some changes to my healthcare coverage and update my information.
I am very concerned with the safety of my information. I thought they were from the health insurance marketplace.
If you could change my id to my email and give me the password I would very much appreciate it.
If not I will assume you are an identity thief and contact the FBI.
On the one hand, this isn't nearly as big of a shock to me as it wsa when Michigan hit 600,000 enrollees (a full 100K higher than earlier eligibility estimates).
On the other hand, 36,000 more people covered than you expected is still 36,000 more people covered!
As you can see from the NM Medicaid enrollment report below (click on it to see the full-size version), as of the end of March, New Mexico was up to 205,901 people enrolled specifically in the ACA expansion program. According to the NM Human Services Dept., the state was only expecting around 170,000 people total to even be eligible.
Of course, that was in March. According to their latest projections from May, they estimate expansion enrollment has reached around 222,000 as of today...and are now projecting it to reach over 241,000 by next June. If that proves accurate, they'll have enrolled nearly 42% more people than expected.
Here's your chance to explain whether this is Good or Bad news.
You may recall that in early May, Rebecca Stob, an actuary iin Washington State, wrote a guest post explaining why a new Standard & Poors report which had just come out was a bit troubling but no cause for major alarm (yet). It basically has to do with the "Three R's" put in place by the ACA (Risk Adjustment, Reinsurance and Risk Corridors) for insurance companies to help smooth the transition from the pre-ACA world over the first few years.
In her post, Stob referred to the fact that:
2014 results are still uncertain for the other 2Rs. What is reported in insurer's financial statements are still estimates and insurers won't know the results from risk adjustment and reinsurance until they get the final report in June.
Well, it's the last day of June, and sure enough, look what was just released...
As regular readers know, I repeatedly mentioned my presentation to the Society of Actuaries annual conference in Atlanta, GA a cuople of weeks ago. This was a Big Deal® for me for a couple of reasons: First, it was my first out-of-town speaking engagement; second, it's the first time I've flown anywhere in nearly a decade; and third, the event happened to take place smack in the middle of KingvBurwell-apalooza. Considering that this is the Society of Actuaries, that meant a hell of a lot; it was on everyone's mind throughout the event, especially since there was a good chance at the time that the Supreme Court decision would be announced the very next day (that Thursday).
One week ago I posted en entry titled "Color me shocked: Michigan GOP State Senator spewing nonsense", which documented an appallingly erroneous Op-Ed by Republican State Senator Patrick Colbeck riddled with basic mathematical errors about the Affordable Care Act.
Among the many factual errors included in Colbeck's essay were such gems as:
Between all the craziness surrounding the King v. Burwell decision and the indirectly-related Obergefell v. Hodges decision and it being my birthday weekend and all, a whole mess of ACA/healthcare stories piled up over the past week...
If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like a whole lot of poor people in non-expansion states were effectively forced into padding their official income in order to qualify for federal tax credits due to their GOP overlords being jackasses. I'm not sure whether that's a problem legally (as opposed to deliberately cutting your official income), but it seems to me that this will only work for so long before it catches up with them recordkeeping-wise?
