(sigh) The good news is that none of the five carrier rate filings for Utah's individual market have been redacted. Hooray! The bad news is taht only one of the five (Molina) included their current enrollment total on the filing at all. Boo!
As a result, I'm only able to run a "mostly" unweighted average...that is, it's an unweighted average of the other four carriers, plus a slight additional tweak based on the tiny number (448 people) enrolled in Molina policies. Utah's total individual market should be around 240,000 people, so that's barely a rounding error. My best guess is that unsubsidized enrollees are looking at roughly a 5.9% average premium drop next year.
For the state's small group market, the unweighted average increase is 2.7%.
The full expansion initiative passed last fall, of course, is supposed to cover Utah residents earning up to 138% of the poverty line, or around 150,000 people...without any work requirements.
The bill barreling through the Utah Legislature was “an effort to override the will of the people,” said Matthew Slonaker, the executive director of the Utah Health Policy Project, a nonprofit group that supported the full expansion of Medicaid.
Utah lawmakers, worried that the sales tax increase might not fully cover the costs, are rushing through a bill that would limit the expansion of Medicaid to people with incomes less than or equal to the poverty level, about $12,140 for an individual.
State officials say that the bill, which is estimated to cover 90,000 people, could be on the desk of Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican, in a week or two.
The full expansion initiative passed last fall, of course, is supposed to cover Utah residents earning up to 138% of the poverty line, or around 150,000 people...without any work requirements.
The bill barreling through the Utah Legislature was “an effort to override the will of the people,” said Matthew Slonaker, the executive director of the Utah Health Policy Project, a nonprofit group that supported the full expansion of Medicaid.
Utah lawmakers, worried that the sales tax increase might not fully cover the costs, are rushing through a bill that would limit the expansion of Medicaid to people with incomes less than or equal to the poverty level, about $12,140 for an individual.
State officials say that the bill, which is estimated to cover 90,000 people, could be on the desk of Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican, in a week or two.
In Utah and Idaho, G.O.P. Looks to Curb Medicaid Expansions That Voters Approved
The voters of Utah and Idaho, two deeply Republican states, defied the will of their political leaders in November and voted to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Now those leaders are striking back, moving to roll back the expansions — with encouragement, they say, from the Trump administration.
Utah’s ballot measure, approved with support from 53 percent of voters, would expand Medicaid to cover people with incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty level — up to about $16,750 a year for an individual — and pay the state’s share with a small increase of the sales tax. Under the ballot initiative, 150,000 people are expected to gain coverage, starting April 1.
I realize this may seem a bit late in the game seeing how the 2019 ACA Open Enrollment Period has already started, but I do like to be as complete and thorough as possible, and there were still 9 states missing final/approved premium rate change analyses as of yesterday which I wanted to check off my 2019 Rate Hike Project list.
Fortunately, RateReview.HealthCare.Gov has finally updated their database to include the approved rate changes for every state, which made it easy to take care of most of these. Making things even easier (although not necessarily better from an enrollee perspective), in three states the approved rates are exactly what the requested rates were for every carrier: Alabama, Mississippi and Utah:
I just realized that while I've written quite a bit about the potential loss of Medicaid coverage for thousands of residents of Michigan, Kentucky and Arkansas over the past few months due to the new work requirement laws in those states, It's been far too long since I've given a shout-out to the four states which are hoping to add Medicaid expansion (or at least continue it, in one case) exactly one week from today.
For years, elected leaders in conservative states have resisted expanding Medicaid, the government health program for low-income Americans. Now voters in four of those states will decide the question directly.
Utah has four carriers offering ACA-compliant individual market plans. Two of them (BridgeSpan and Regence BCBS) only offered their policies off-exchange this year; I'm not sure what the status is for either one in 2019. I can only find hard enrollment data for one of the four (Regence), so I'm estimating the other three based on a combination of last year's numbers and the total estimated individual market size in Utah from 2017. Because of this, consider the Utah estimates to be even rougher than some other states.
Having said that, there's one interesting extra sabotage factor to consider for the University of Utah rate filing: They note that they've added an extra 10.3% to their 2019 rates specifically tied to last year's Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) cut-off. I presume they chose not to bake the CSR load into their rates this year, but I don't think Utah went the "mixed load" route so who knows?
In any event, as far as I can tell, this means around a 14-point #ACASabotage factor, between CSR load, mandate repeal and #ShortAssPlans.
BOISE — A Medicaid expansion proposal has passed the signature threshold, officials confirmed on Thursday, but said further review is neededbefore it gets on the November ballot.
Ada County Chief Deputy Clerk Phil McGrane says county clerks across the state have verified roughly 58,000 signatures that organizers submitted earlier this month.
The effort needed at least 56,192 signatures to qualify. However, those signatures must also come from 6 percent of the registered voters in at least 18 of Idaho’s 35 legislative districts.
McGrane says it’ll be up to the state to determine if the signatures meet the legislative district requirements.
Reclaim Idaho, the group that organized the Medicaid expansion effort, did not immediately return a request for comment.
A week or so I noted that activists in Utah had managed to secure enough ballot petition signatures to get full, no-strings-attached ACA Medicaid expansion placed on the ballot this November...superseding legislation signed by the Governor which would otherwise only expand it to fewer than half as many people, while also imposing a work requirement on enrollees:
If approved, the initiative would require the state to expand Medicaid to people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, and would prohibit enrollment caps.
Under ObamaCare, the federal government would cover 90 percent of the costs of expansion. The state share would be funded through a 0.15 percent increase in the sales tax.
...The ballot initiative would cover more than 150,000 people.
A couple of weeks ago I reported that the state legislature and governor of deep red Utah has agreed to partly expand Medicaid under the ACA...
Gov. Gary Herbert signed a measure Tuesday to give more than 70,000 needy Utahns access to government health coverage, ending years of failed attempts on Capitol Hill to expand Medicaid in the state.
But whether House Bill 472 ever takes effect still remains uncertain. Under President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Utah law needs approval by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which has sent mixed signals on whether it will fully sign off.
Even if CMS does approve HB472, it will likely be about a year — even on an aggressive schedule — before the state can begin enrolling people for coverage.
