A couple of weeks ago, both Louise Norris and I crunched the South Carolina data and came up with different estimates of the weighted average requested 2016 rate hikes for the ACA-compliant individual market. She used a worst-case scenario and estimated it to be around 16.8%; I took a slightly more optimistic approach and came up with 15.2%.
As you can see, even though there are only 5 carriers operating on the ACA exchange and another 5 offering policies off-exchange only, the overall average is still 15.9% either way:
It's been awhile since I've crunched the numbers for a new state. As I noted a week ago, I've covered 42 states representing 87% of the total population, so any further changes assuming 100% of current enrollees stay with their current policy are likely to be fairly nominal unless various insurance regulators surprise me and slash the approved rate hikes significantly in a few states.
Thankfully, Louise Norris has picked up the ball and seems to be filling in some of the missing pieces using my own methodology, including North Dakota and South Carolina. I'll tackle the Palmetto State first:
Rates have not yet been approved for 2016, but Healthcare.gov’s rate review tool shows proposed rates from carriers that have requested rate increases of ten percent or more. In South Carolina, that applies to two current exchange carriers:
Yeah, that's right, I'll say it: Luis Lang is a hypocrite.
Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall has a story about a guy in South Carolina named Luis Lang who's in a nasty situation due to a combination of bad timing, Republican cold-heartedness and, to be blunt, his own stupidity.
First, the backstory:
As the Charlotte Observer explains, Lang is a self-employed handyman who works as a contractor with banks and the federal government to maintain foreclosed properties. He was making a decent living, enough to be the sole breadwinner in the family. As the Observer puts it, Lang "he has never bought insurance. Instead, he says, he prided himself on paying his own medical bills."
A decision made more than three years ago by a committee that no longer exists might deal a major blow to Obamacare in South Carolina this summer.
...Former members of the S.C. Health Exchange Planning Committee say they weren’t aware in 2011 that their opposition to a state-based insurance marketplace might jeopardize so many people’s ability to pay for coverage.
“At no point in the committee’s discussion was there ever raised a concern that by opting into the federal exchange we were losing anything — especially subsidies,” said Tim Ervolina, president of the United Way Foundation of South Carolina and a former planning committee member. “I recall a very intense discussion with (former) Sen. (Mike) Rose, who stated that, after reviewing the law, he felt confident that we had nothing to lose and everything to gain by opting into the federal exchange.”
Unfortunately, there aren't any specific enrollment numbers given out in this article, but the 3rd paragraph includes a hell of an eye-opener...especially given that this is in deep-red South Carolina:
Last year, insurance agents and federally funded navigators were sitting around their computers, hoping to get into the balky website in the first few weeks after it went online on Oct. 1. When they were able to log in, the system moved at a snail’s pace. The rollout was viewed as a disaster for the Obama administration and the early implementation of the insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act.
This year, the problem has been finding enough time to help the early rush of people who want to either shop for the best policy or go ahead and enroll. At Richland Library, the appointments for enrollment help are booked through the end of November.
Those are two of the findings of a survey released today by the Center for Outcomes Research & Education at Providence Health Services. The goals were to understand who enrolled, assess their connection to care before and after enrollment and to understand their health. At the time of the study, 76,569 Oregonians had signed up through open enrollment.
If I'm going to boast about the states where high percentages of QHPs are paid for (WA, MA, CT, OR, WV & RI, for starters), I do have to be honest and present the lower figures as well. According to the SC insurance commissioner, only about 71.3% of exchange QHPs in that state had been paid up as of 4/30, which is admittedly not great:
Of the 119,784 individuals in South Carolina who applied and selected a policy on the federal exchange, 85,453 - about 71 percent - paid their first month's premium by April 30, Farmer said. That was the last possible day to make that first payment. Those who didn't pay by that date aren't actually insured, he said.
As a side note, that 119,784 figure is actually higher than the official 4/19 HHS total of 118,324; presumably another 1,460 trickled in from 4/20 - 4/30. Even using the lower number, however, the paid rate would only be 1% higher (72.2%).
Again, those extra 11 days seem to be a bit more significant than you'd think; SC was at about 115K according to the HHS report, so they've added another 3,500 or so since 4/19:
Health and Human Services officials said 118,324 state residents — or about 80 percent of the total 146,683 — selected a private health insurance plan. They said 28,359 were eligible for Medicaid.
The S.C. Department of Insurance reported Friday that 114,789 individuals selected a plan on the federal exchange through April 15 - up from an 97,000 estimate earlier this month.
Ah, at last...the Federal exchange state data is starting to trickle in now...
Nearly 100,000 South Carolinians enrolled in a health insurance policy on HealthCare.govbetween Oct. 1 and March 31, the director of the state's insurance department said Monday.
But only some of those 97,387 individuals - about 57 percent - have paid their first month's premium, Director Ray Farmer said.
The number of people actually enrolled may go up or down through May 1 - the deadline by which that first payment must be made.
Data released Monday by the S.C. Department of Insurance shows a sharp increase in Obamacare enrollment in South Carolina during the second half of March. Approximately 30,000 people in this state signed up for a plan during the last two weeks of open enrollment.
It's nice to be able to plug in SC's data, but the "How many have PAID???" thing is more amusing. 31% of the enrollees don't have their policy start until May 1st, so it's only 69% who you would even expect to have paid yet. Presumably the bulk of the 11% in between will pay over the next few weeks, and the 31% May-starts will start paying in increasing numbers as well.
