I signed up for Anthem Blue Cross to meet the May deadline. My previous employer also was Anthem Blue Cross, with prescription drug benefits. As I am starting a new business, I chose to go with Covered California through Anthem Blue Cross. The same company, without the drug coverage — or so I thought. Here's what I got:
Cost $845 a month, $5,000 deductible.
Family physician doesn't take the plan.
Wife's gynecologist doesn't take the plan.
Dermatologist doesn't take the plan.
Dentist doesn't take the Covered California dental plan.
So for $10,140 in annual premiums and $5,000 deductible, I am now searching for new doctors for my family.
This is flat-out wrong and should be stopped/fixed immediately:
A worrisome trend is emerging among some Californians who thought they were safe and secure under Covered California: Their plans are being canceled without consent and sometimes without notice.
...A growing number of Californians with Covered California plans are learning – sometimes through happenstance – that their plans no longer exist. Some, like Manahan, are getting shunted into Medi-Cal. Others are dropped outright.
...Covered California acknowledges that it is yanking some people off of its plans and putting them on Medi-Cal, months after they signed up or submitted income information.
We’re “in the process of manually verifying the documents provided by individuals who were conditionally eligible for obtaining health care coverage through our agency,” says Covered California spokesman James Scullary. “Through that process, some customers will receive notices indicating they are now eligible for no-cost or low-cost Medi-Cal coverage.”
Vermont signed a revised contract with the tech firm Optum that expands its role in Vermont Health Connect’s operations.
Optum already had a contract worth $5.6 million for consulting work, and the latest deal, signed Aug. 15, is worth an additional $9.5 million for a total of $15.1 million.
...At latest count, Optum has helped the state halve its backlog of coverage changes and information errors from a high of more than 14,000 to roughly 7,000. Also, close to 4,000 people are having billing issues with Vermont Health Connect. There is some overlap between the two groups, Miller said.
OK, a couple of caveats here: First, yes, it's California; obviously this isn't exactly representative of states like, say, Oklahoma or Alabama. Second, CoveredCA had a much smoother rollout last fall than HC.gov did (and some of the other state exchanges are still struggling with serious technical issues).
Having said all that, California does still have over 12% of the total U.S. population, and they do tend to be early adopters historically. With that in mind...
The nation’s new health care law is surging in popularity in the Golden State, according to the Field Poll, which finds more Californians today — of all political stripes — support the Affordable Care Act than at any time since it was signed into law four years ago.
And by a two-to-one margin, they praise the successful way it’s been rolled out in the state, compared to the federal government’s glitch-ridden system.
Still more now say they’re satisfied with the way the health care system is working in the state, compared to a year ago.
Usually I'm able to track down my data either by myself or with the help of several people who send me data links on a fairly regular basis. This has resulted in my being able to fill in off-season QHP enrollment data for almost 20 states.
However, there are several states whose data has eluded me so far...and unfortunately, this includes the two largest state-run exchanges: California and New York. I've contacted both exchanges; CoveredCA told me that updated enrollment numbers would be released "soon" but that was a good month ago. The New York State of Health exchange flatly stated that they, like HHS, would not be giving out any sort of official off-season enrollment update. There's also the Rhode Island exchange, which hasn't responded to my requests at all. (Update: Never mind that last one; just heard directly from the RI exchange, hopefully they'll be able to provide an update soon...)
RIGOROUS NEGOTIATIONS WITH HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES KEEP RATE INCREASES LOW AND CHOICES ROBUST
Strong Enrollment for 2014 Prompts Balanced Risk Pool and Competition Between Health Plans; Average Statewide Rate Increase Kept to 4.2 Percent
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The vast majority of Covered California consumers will see low increases in their health insurance premiums for 2015, and many consumers will see no increase or even a decrease. The statewide weighted average[*] came in at 4.2 percent, with some plans offering weighted average rates that are 8.5 percent lower than current pricing.
First, remember the news from yesterday that the ACA had lopped California's uninsured rate in half, from 22% down to 11% as of June? 22% of 38 million people = about 8.36 million; half of that is 4.18 million.
Next, remember that massive backlog of 900,000 new Medicaid (aka Medi-Cal) enrollees that California was working with as of the end of May?
For months, the state has labored under the largest such pile-up in the country, with 900,000 pending cases reported in May—the combined result of unexpectedly high application numbers and bug-ridden computer systems.
A couple of weeks ago there was much ado about a new Commonwealth Fund survey which found that nationally, the uninsured rate had been cut by 25% (from 20% down to 15%). Well, buried in that study was this bit about California specifically:
The percentage of uninsured Californians has been cut in half since the federal health law began expanding coverage nine months ago, according to a new national survey.
In September of 2013, 22 percent of California adults were uninsured. By last month, that number had fallen to just 11 percent, the biggest drop among the nation’s six largest states.
Some days I forget just how friggin' HUGE the state of California is...
Part of the delays can be attributed to high demand. In California, as in many of the 26 states that opted to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, people turned out in much higher numbers than projected. The state health department said it now expects 2.2 million people to enroll in Medi-Cal by next month -- 300,000 more than estimated last fall.
Roughly 1.4 million of those applicants were newly eligible for Medi-Cal, which was expanded under the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, to serve people who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. About 600,000 more were previously eligible for coverage but had not enrolled. Experts say the massive outreach campaigns across the country helped alert many of these people to their eligibility.
While the massive backlog issue is a serious problem, this story does give some nice solid numbers to plug into the Medicaid spreadsheet for the largest state in the country:
Since I started the ACA Signups project, I've generally restricted my posts to ACA enrollment-specific articles and data. After all, the subject of healthcare is so huge, and there's so many other far better sources for developments in the medical field, etc, that it seems best to stick to the subject at hand.
However, the anti-vaxxer movement, which started as the punchline to a bad joke named "Jenny McCarthy" has ceased to be amusing and has now become flat-out frightening.
From January 1 to June 10 this year, California already had 3,458 cases of whopping cough, which already exceeds the number of cases reported in 2013, and following a surge in the incidence of the disease in the past two weeks, health official found it necessary to declare an epidemic.
