CSRs

Earlier today I noted that New York has officially implemented their expansion of the Essential Plan, their branding of the ACA-funded Basic Health Plan (BHP) program that currently covers 1.2 million New Yorkers, from residents earning under 200% of the Federal Poverty Level up to those earning as much as 250% FPL.

In doing so, around 100,000 additional people are now enrolled in the BHP program, with roughly 62,000 of them now saving an average $4,700/year versus the ACA exchange plans they were previously enrolled in, plus another ~32,000 who I presume are completely new to either program.

It's been about a week since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services published the official 2024 ACA Open Enrollment Period Public Use Files, and I'm still digging through the mountain of data & demographics.

Today I want to address the question of Actuarial Value (AV)...that is, what percent of medical expenses (in aggregate) a given healthcare policy actually pays for. As a quick reminder, ACA policies are generally broken into four AV categories, labeled by metal levels: Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum, which generally cover roughly 60%, 70%, 80% or 90% of enrollees in-network medical expenses per year (there's a fifth category in front of Bronze called Catastrophic plans, but these have limited eligibility and hardly anyone enrolls in them anyway).

I say generally because there's a bit of wiggle room here:

...as of 2023, the de minimus range has been reduced, imposing the following actuarial value ranges for metal-level plans:

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan & Inflation Reduction Act, residents of every state + DC who earn less than 150% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), around $20,400/yr for a single adult, is eligible for a $0-premium "Secret Platinum" plan. If they earn between 150 - 200% FPL (roughly $27,200/yr), they're eligible for a slightly less-generous "Secret Platinum" plan with premiums less than 2% of their income (just $45/month for a single adult).

As I explained here, while Silver ACA plans normally only cover around 70% of the average enrollees' medical expenses (in aggregate), the ACA's "Cost Sharing Reduction" (CSR) subsidies mean that eligible enrollees who select "CSR Silver" plans will actually have 94% of their expenses covered for the < 150% crowd and 87% of their expenses covered for the 150 - 200% crowd.

Since Gold plans cover around 80% of expenses & Platinum plans cover roughly 90%, this means that "CSR Silver" is effectively "Secret Platinum" plans for anyone earning less than 200% FPL.

via Amy Lotven of Inside Health Policy:

Advocates To CMS: Fix Rate Misalignment In Next Exchange Reg

A coalition of patient advocates is urging HHS to address high out-of-pocket costs by demanding that insurers selling marketplace coverage strictly adhere to the Affordable Care Act’s rate-setting requirements. Insurers have strayed from the mandate in recent years by underpricing silver-tier plans and overpricing the more-generous gold-level products, the advocates say, highlighting an issue that experts have been raising for years and that some states are already addressing at the local level.

But health experts also say that HHS must fix misalignments in the risk adjustment program - and that exchanges must have strong consumer decision support tools -for a policy fix to be sustainable.

By clarifying and enforcing the ACA’s single risk pool requirement, HHS could significantly reduce consumers’ cost-sharing burdens while also discouraging gaming, the advocates say.

Back in March, I wrote up an exhaustive history of the House v. Burwell court case, which has seen more twists and turns than a small intestine.

I'm not gonna recap the whole thing yet again today (click the first link above for that), but I concluded the most recent chapter by noting:

Simply appropriating CSR payments and killing off Silver Loading would pay for more than 40% of the cost of massively upgrading the ACA (perhaps $250 billion of the $600 billion or so total 10-yr cost).

I've written in-depth explainers before of how Silver Loading came into existence and how it works as part of longer blog posts, but I also wanted to have a simpler, standalone version, so here it is.

First, a quick backstory:

I honestly thought that I had written the final chapter in this absurd saga, which started two administrations, two House Speakers, three HHS Secretaries and three U.S. Attorney Generals ago when the Federal Circuit Court issued their final ruling last August, but apparently not.

Since this insanity has been grinding away for nearly seven years now, I'm pretty much just reposting my entire August entry, with an important update tacked on at the end.

Here's a quick recap:

• The ACA includes two types of financial subsidies for individual market enrollees through the ACA exchanges (HealthCare.Gov, CoveredCA.com, etc). One program is called Advance Premium Tax Credits (APTC), which reduces monthly premiums for low- and moderate-income. APTCs are the subsidies which have been substantially beefed up by the American Rescue Plan (the additional subsidies will be available starting in April in most states, soon thereafter in most other states).

• The other type of subsidies are called Cost Sharing Reductions (CSR), which reduce deductibles, co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses for low-income enrollees.

• In 2014, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner filed a lawsuit on behalf of Congressional Republicans against the Obama Administration. They had several beefs with the ACA (shocker!), including a claim that the CSR payments were unconstitutional because they weren't explicitly appropriated by Congress in the text of the Affordable Care Act (even though the program itself was described in detail, including the payment mechanism/etc.)

Welcome to the latest chapter in the long, epic CSR Lawsuit Saga which has been slogging along for six years now.

Here's a quick recap (again):

• The ACA includes two types of financial subsidies for individual market enrollees through the ACA exchanges (HealthCare.Gov, CoveredCA.com, etc). One program is called Advance Premium Tax Credits (APTC), which reduces monthly premiums for low- and moderate-income. The other is called Cost Sharing Reductions (CSR), which reduces deductibles, co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses for low-income enrollees.

• In 2014, then-Speaker of the House John Boehner filed a lawsuit on behalf of Congressional Republicans against the Obama Administration. They had several beefs with the ACA (shocker!), including a claim that the CSR payments were unconstitutional because they weren't explicitly appropriated by Congress in the text of the Affordable Care Act (even though the program itself was described in detail, including the payment mechanism/etc.)

NOTE: This is a joint post by three of my colleagues and myself:
David M. Anderson, Charles Gaba, Louise Norris and Andrew Sprung

State policymakers have been prolific and creative in putting forward measures to strengthen their ACA marketplaces. Measures enacted since 2017 or in progress now include reinsurance programs, which reduced base premiums by an average of 20% in their first year in the first seven states to implement such programs; new or renewed state-based exchanges, which capture insurance user fees that can be used for advertising and outreach; state premium subsidies to supplement federal subsidies; and state-based individual mandates, which can provide funding for all of the above.

I talked about this the other day, but re-reading my post, I don't think I emphasized it nearly enough:

It's also important to keep in mind that due to how the ACA's subsidy formula is structured (combined with Silver Loading and Silver Switching), a lower benchmark premium will actually result in higher net premiums for many subsidized enrollees (although it's still good news for those who are unsubsidized). Here's why:

• Let's say the unsubsidized premiums for a given enrollee in 2019 is $400 for Bronze, $600 for the benchmark Silver and $700 for Gold.
• Let's say that enrollee earns exactly $32K/year (256% FPL), meaning they only have to pay 8.54% of their income for the benchmark plan.
• That means they qualify for ($7,200 - $2,733) = $4,467 in subsidies ($372/month).

This would leave them paying $228/month for the benchmark Silver...but they can apply that towards a Bronze plan if they wish so they'd only pay $28/month, or a Gold plan so they only pay $328/month.