MICHIGAN: Another One (Mostly) Bites The Dust; 12th CO-OP Drops Off Exchange, May Go Belly-Up
It appears that East Lansing-based Consumers Mutual Insurance of Michigan could wind down operations this year as it is not participating in the state health insurance exchange for 2016.
But officials of Consumers Mutual today are discussing several options that could determine its future status with the state Department of Insurance and Financial Services, said David Eich, marketing and public relations officer with Consumers Mutual.
Consumers Mutual CEO Dennis Litos said: "We are reviewing our situation (financial condition) with DIFS and should conclude on a future direction this week.”
While Eich said he could not disclose the options, he said one is “winding down” the company, which has 28,000 members, including about 6,000 on the exchange.
As I noted last night, thanks to the federal Rate Review website finally being updated to include the final, approved 2022 rates for both the individual and small group markets in all 50 states (+DC), I've been able to fill in the missing data for my annual ACA Rate Change Project.
As I note there, the overall weighted average looks like it'll be roughly +3.5% nationally.
Normally I write up a separate entry for both the preliminary and approved rate changes in each individual state, but it seems like overkill to create 14 separate entries at once. Besides, in many of these states there's been few if any changes between the preliminary and approved rate changes.
Nebraska doesn't even bother listing indy/small group plan rate filings on their own insurance department website...the link goes directly to the federal Rate Review database. The problem with this is that very few filings here are unredacted, which means it's difficult to acquire the policy enrollees for many carriers needed to run a weighted average.
Fortunately, Nebraska has only 3 carriers for 2022...one of which is brand new to the state (Oscar Health), and of the other two, Medica's filing summary does include an exact number of enrollees. That leaves just Bright Health, and since I know (roughly) how many enrollees are in Nebraska's overall indy market, voila: 8.6% average rate increases.
On the other hand, I don't have the enrollment for any of the 4 Small Group market carriers. It also looks like UnitedHealthcare is pulling out of the NE sm. group market, but it might just be that the federal database doesn't have them listed yet (I doubt this since it's so close to the Open Enrollment Period). The unweighted average rate change is a 2.1% reduction:
I've once again relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.
For the various enrollment data, I'm using data from Medicaid.gov's Medicaid Enrollment Data Collected Through MBES reports. Unfortunately, they've only published enrollment data through December 2020. In some states I've been able to get more recent enrollment data from state websites and other sources.
Now that I've developed a standardized format/layout & methodology for tracking both state- and county-level COVID vaccination levels by partisan lean (which can also be easily applied to other variables like education level, median income, population density, ethnicity, etc), I've started moving beyond my home state of Michigan.
NOTE: This is an updated version of a post from a couple of months ago. Since then, there's been a MASSIVELY important development: The passage of the American Rescue Plan, which includes a dramatic upgrade in ACA subsidies for not only the millions of people already receiving them, but for millions more who didn't previously qualify for financial assistance.
Much has been written by myself and others (especially the Kaiser Family Foundation) about the fact that millions of uninsured Americans are eligible for ZERO PREMIUM Bronze ACA healthcare policies.
I say "Zero Premium" instead of "Free" because there's still deductibles and co-pays involved, although all ACA plans also include a long list of free preventative services from physicals and blood screenings to mammograms and immunizations with no deductible or co-pay involved.
Much has been written by myself and others (especially the Kaiser Family Foundation) about the fact that millions of uninsured Americans are eligible for ZERO PREMIUM Bronze ACA healthcare policies.
I say "Zero Premium" instead of "Free" because there's still deductibles and co-pays involved, although all ACA plans also include a long list of free preventative services from physicals and blood screenings to mammograms and immunizations with no deductible or co-pay involved.
If you have a fairly healthy year, you really could go the entire year without paying a dime in healthcare costs while still taking advantage of many of these free services, and also having the peace of mind that in a worst-case scenario, at least you wouldn't go bankrupt. Not perfect, but a lot better than going bare especially since you wouldn't pay a dime in premiums.
I'm not sure what's going on with Bright Health Care in Nebraska. They entered the state's ACA market in 2020, but for whatever reason they aren't showing up in the HealthCare.Gov Rate Review database. The only carrier listed for the state's individual market is Medica, and the SERFF database for Nebraska doesn't bring up either one.
Even more curious, when I ran a search to make sure that Bright hadn't simply jumped in and then out again the following year, I found this article:
Bright Health Plan announced today its 2021 expansion plan. It will expand access to its Medicare Advantage, individual and family-plan products in select areas, and to add fully-insured small business plans to its available products in certain markets.
When I first ran the preliminary 2020 avg. rate hike numbers for Nebraska in August, the sole carrier offering ACA-compliant policies in the state (Medica) was planning on reducing their average premiums by 5.3%. Yesterday the final, approved rates were posted by CMS, and unsubsidized 2020 premiums will be even lower, by 6.9% on average.
For 2020, Bright Health is joining the Nebraska exchange.
