Its all just one step forward in a longer journey.Grand Total as of March 27, 2014: (13.0 M - 16.8 M)
Enrollment Period Elapsed: 98.9%
Original 7M CBO Exchange QHP Projection Reached: 93.7%
Exchange QHP Projection, 10/1/13 - 3/31/14: 6.72M
(OFF-Exchange QHPs are at least 558K, more likely 4M or more nationally)
Grand Total as of March 27, 2014: (13.1 M - 16.8 M)
Enrollment Period Elapsed: 99.4%
Original 7M CBO Exchange QHP Projection Reached: 94.6%
Exchange QHP Projection, 10/1/13 - 3/31/14: 6.9 - 7.0M
(OFF-Exchange QHPs are at least 558K, more likely 4M or more nationally)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapotheca ... uninsured/Coverage Expansion Fail: Less Than One-Third Of Obamacare Exchange Enrollees Were Previously Uninsured
At the end of the day, for all of the rhetoric and promises about what Obamacare would achieve, the health law’s most ardent supporters have stuck to their guns because of one thing: coverage expansion. But new data suggests that Obamacare may fail even to achieve this goal. Instead of expanding coverage to those without it, Obamacare is replacing the pre-existing market for private insurance. Surveys from insurers and other industry players indicate that as few as 11 percent of those on Obamacare’s exchanges were previously uninsured. If these trends continue, the probability increases that Obamacare will eventually get repealed.
65-89% of Obamacare exchanges enrollees were previously insured
The latest reporting on this topic comes from Christopher Weaver and Anna Wilde Mathews of the Wall Street Journal. They cite several industry surveys on the coverage history of those signing up for insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. The first, from McKinsey & Co., indicates that “only 11 percent of consumers who bought new coverage under the law were previously uninsured.” McKinsey surveyed 4,563 individuals “thought to be eligible for the health-law marketplaces,” of which 389 had enrolled in exchange-based plans.
Of those that didn’t sign up for Obamacare-based coverage, 52 percent stated that “affordability” was their biggest complaint with the exchanges’ plan offerings. Only 30 percent cited “technical challenges in buying the plans.”
HealthMarkets, a insurance holding company based in Texas, conducted its own survey based on the 7,500-or-so people that the company enrolled in exchange-based plans. Based on their survey, obtained by Wilde and Mathews, only 35 percent of enrollees were previously uninsured. 10 percent previously had employer-sponsored coverage, but were dropping into the exchanges either because the exchanges offered a better (i.e., taxpayer-subsidized) deal, or because their employer had stopped offering coverage.
15 percent previously had individually-purchased coverage, but their old plans had been rendered illegal by Obamacare and were canceled. The remaining 40 percent were people previously covered under the old individual market, a market that was substantially less expensive than the Obamacare exchanges.
Priority Health, a non-profit health insurer in Michigan, surveyed 1,000 “enrollees…in plans that comply with the law,” and found that only a quarter were previously uninsured. Another 25 percent had previously enjoyed employer-sponsored coverage; the remaining 50 percent had been previously covered under individually-purchased plans.
Joan Budden, chief marketing officer at Priority Health, told Wilde and Mathews that Michigan’s health insurers had expected 400,000 uninsured Michiganders to enroll in exchange based plans during the initial enrollment year. According to the latest data from the Obama administration, as of December 28, only 75,511 had “selected a marketplace plan.” Of those, only an unknown fraction had paid their first month’s premium, and therefore were actually enrolled in new health coverage.
“I don’t know if we’re growing the number of people with insurance,” a Minnesota-based health insurer told Wilde and Mathews. “We’re just adding complexity.”
If we assume that around one-third of exchange enrollees were previously uninsured, and that 90 percent of those who have “selected a marketplace plan” will eventually enroll in coverage, the Obamacare exchanges have thus far only expanded coverage to 660,000 people, far less than the 7 million projected by the Congressional Budget Office.
Obama administration also exaggerating Medicaid enrollments
The Journal report comes on the heels of new analyses indicating that the Obama administration is wildly exaggerating the number of people who have signed up for the law’s expansion of the Medicaid program for low-income Americans. The administration claims that more than 4 million Americans have signed up for Medicaid coverage under the law. But Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics figures that only 5 to 7.5 percent of those enrollees were due to Obamacare.
Trende went back and examined new Medicaid enrollments in the states that have expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, and those that have not. He found, for example, that of the 1.7 million people in November who were “determined eligible for Medicaid and CHIP by State Agencies” under Obamacare, the majority—55 percent—took place in states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. In other words, those enrollments were for people who were previously eligible for Medicaid under prior law.
That means that a good chunk of the Medicaid enrollments in expanding states were also for previously eligible people. Trende then went back and looked at previous trends for Medicaid enrollment, prior to Obamacare’s launch. It turns out that people are enrolling and disenrolling in Medicaid all the time. So if you subtract out the baseline of normal enrollment trends, “we have an actual estimate for Medicaid enrollment due directly to the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid: 190,000.”
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, who had previously repeated the administration’s Medicaid enrollment claims, went back and reviewed Trende’s analysis. Kessler described the administration’s Medicaid enrollment claims as “ridiculous” and admonished reporters “to be very careful” about using them. To his credit, he gave Three Pinocchios to everyone—including himself—who had “improperly used [the administration’s figure] or left the wrong impression about it.”
The real question is why do Republicans hate people so much that they would spend a fortune trying to make them vulnerable to bankrupcy? When this could have been a great bi-partisan triumph of united government they turned it into something evil purely for electoral reasons.The Actual Numbers: 14.6 - 22.1 Million
by Charles Gaba on Tue, 04/01/2014 - 12:58am
7.08 Million Exchange-based QHPs (estimate)
+ 71,000 SHOP QHPs
+ 9.0 Million total OFF-Exchange QHPs (estimate from the Rand Corp.)
+ 4.71 Million New "Strict Expansion" Medicaid enrollees
+ 1.80 Million New "Woodworker" Medicaid enrollees (estimate)
+ 3.10 Million 19-26 Year Olds on their Parent's Plans (estimate)
- 3.70 Million Cancelled Non-Compliant Policies
(see? I told you I'd subtract these once I knew the total number of off-exchange QHPs!)
= appx. 22.1 Million People (at the high end) or 14.6 Million (at the low end)
Of course, you can quibble about how many of the 9 million off-exchange QHPs were previously uninsured, or how many of the cancelled plans were swapped out with QHPs from the exchanges vs the off-exchange amount. You can quibble about whether the "sub26ers" should be 3.1 million or only 2.5 million. You can argue bout whether "woodworkers" should "count" or not (as if a massive outreach campaign which encourages previously-eligible people to enroll in a program they qualify for isn't an accomplishment to be proud of). You can argue about whether unpaid QHPs should be counted (yet) or not.
The bottom line is this: No matter how you slice it, this is a ton of people receiving decent healthcare coverage who either a) didn't have anything before or b) can no longer be dropped, denied or bankrupted by coverage that was scattershot, piecemeal or shoddy.
yrs,California: Up to 500,000 more Exchange QHPs by 4/15!
by Charles Gaba on Fri, 04/04/2014 - 12:31am
Source:
Mercury News, 04/03/14
Hat Tip To:
dee
A lot of people have asked me if I plan on doing a 4/15 QHP projection. Honestly, I'm a little burnt out at the moment and need some chill time on the prognosticating thing. However, if this news is any guide, it could be huge:
Now topping more than 3 million, the number of Californians who have enrolled in a private health care plan or in Medi-Cal through the state's health insurance exchange will likely rise by about 500,000 people who started but did not finish their applications by Monday's midnight deadline, exchange officials said Thursday.
At a news conference, Peter Lee, executive director of the Covered California exchange, told reporters that of the half-million individuals who had started their applications in the last week of March, at least 20,000 had finished their applications by Tuesday.
Now, I'm assuming that "finished their applications" in this case actually means "enrolled", because 500K / 15 days = 33,333 per day if they plan on squeezing that many in under the new 4/15 wire.
Your need for something negative to say has driven you into unthinking self-contradiction.Joe Guy wrote:I'm waiting for that but not holding my breath.
rubato wrote: As I keep saying; hatred makes you stupid.
rubato wrote:Your need for something negative to say has driven you into unthinking self-contradiction.Joe Guy wrote:I'm waiting for that but not holding my breath.
As I keep saying; hatred makes you stupid.
yrs,
rubato
See, when you stick with what you're good at, you can get a laugh every time...Lord Jim wrote:
When you want to be funny rube, you should stick with the comedy genre that you have absolutely mastered...
I'm speaking of course of Unintentional Irony...
Your attempts at satire or any other comedic approach invariably fall completely flat, (in fact they're not even generally recognizable as "humor") but you are The Charlie Chaplin of Unintentional Irony...You have a natural gift for it; people could work at it for years and be nowhere near as good at it as you are....
Nobody does it better; you should stick with what works.
Indeed you are...So now I'm a rubato statistic....
The RAND Survey is out! Conclusion: NET insurance gain of 9.3M!
by Charles Gaba on Tue, 04/08/2014 - 1:44pm
At last, the big RAND Survey that everyone was freaking out about (and in some cases, completely misinterpreting) has actually been released!
The key numbers:
Using a survey fielded by the RAND American Life Panel, we estimate a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014.
The net result, according to RAND? An overall drop in the adult uninsured rate from 20.5% to 15.8%, or around 9.3M people nationally.
Put another way, the survey estimates that the share of uninsured American adults has dropped over the measured period from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent. Among those gaining coverage, most enrolled through employer-sponsored coverage or Medicaid.
Assuming the RAND study is accurate (and most people from both sides of the aisle seem to think it's a pretty solid source), we may finally have an answer to the question "How many of them were UNINSURED???" Answer? Around 36%...of the first 3.9 million enrolled! That's right: Their study doesn't even include the 3.2 million more people who enrolled in individual QHPs via the exchanges after the survey concluded!
yrs,
Estimated Exchange QHPs as of April 8, 2014: 7.50M
Estimated Total, all sources: (13.7 M - 32.8 M)
Individual QHP Range: (6.98M - 15.31M) • SHOP QHP Range: (106K - 7.27M)
Medicaid/CHIP (5.11M - 7.14M) • Sub26ers (1.60M - 3.10M)
(OFF-Exchange Individual QHPs: 2.07M confirmed; Rand Corp. study finds up to 7.8M total nationally)
(OFF-Exchange SHOP QHPs: 34K confirmed; Rand Corp. study finds up to 7.2M total nationally)
BONUS: ACA causing INSURERS to proactively HELP people w/diabetes!
by Charles Gaba on Mon, 04/14/2014 - 1:04pm
On top of today's CBO report projecting a $104 Billion savings on the cost of the ACA over the next decade and their projection of 2015 premiums only going up slightly, this is a hell of an unexpected bit of news....
As hundreds of thousands of diabetics get health coverage under the federal law, insurance companies are aggressively targeting this glut of new patients, who are expensive to treat and often lax in taking medications and following their diet.
Insurers are calling diabetics when they don't pick up prescriptions or miss appointments. They are arranging transportation to get them to the doctor's office and some are even sending nurses on house calls in an effort to avoid costly complications that will have big impact on their bottom lines.
Well I'll be damned. Private, for-profit insurance companies actively assisting their customers in trying to stay healthy.
Exactly the way that the law was intended to work, I'd say.
And the numbers KEEP going up!CBO Report: The ACA will cost $100B LESS than expected, premiums only up slightly next year
by Charles Gaba on Mon, 04/14/2014 - 12:56pm
Source:
National Journal, 04/14/14: Obamacare Is Getting Cheaper
Hat Tip To:
deaconblues
Hoo, boy...this is gonna cause some heads to explode over at FOX News...
The most expensive provisions of Obamacare will cost taxpayers about $100 billion less than expected, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.
CBO also said it doesn't expect big premium increases next year for insurance plans sold through the health care law's exchanges.
In its latest analysis, CBO said the law's coverage provisions—a narrow part of the law that includes only certain policies—will cost the government $36 billion this year, which is $5 billion less than CBO's previous estimate. Over the next decade, the provisions will cost about $1.4 trillion—roughly $104 billion less than CBO last estimated.
But wait, there's more...
Monday's report also sheds some light on one of the big challenges still to come for Obamacare: next year's premiums. Some critics have warned that premiums could skyrocket next year, based in part on the demographics of the people who signed up for coverage this year.
But CBO isn't expecting a big hike. The budget office says it expects the average premium to rise "slightly" in 2015, by about $100 per year for the middle-of-the-road plans that have proven to be the most popular option in the exchanges.
Premium increases from 2016 on will likely be higher, averaging about 6 percent per year, CBO said. That's a nationwide average; some areas of the country will see bigger jumps, others will see smaller increases. But if CBO's projections pan out, the average increase would still fall short of the double-digit hikes some insurers have predicted.
CBO said rising health care costs—not the risk pool of Obamacare enrollees—is the biggest factor driving its anticipated premium hikes. The people signing up for coverage in the exchanges next year will probably be healthier than those who signed up this year, CBO said, keeping premiums in check.
I've attached a PDF copy of the report itself below. Enjoy!
CBO Report: ACA Costs April 2014
yrs,
Estimated Exchange QHPs as of April 13, 2014: 7.68M
Estimated Total, all sources: (14.0 M - 20.3 M)*
Individual QHP Range: (7.15M - 9.78M) • Medicaid/CHIP (5.23M - 7.29M)
ESIs (106K documented) • Sub26ers (1.60M - 3.10M)
(OFF-Exch. QHPs: 2.09M confirmed; Rand study finds up to 5.7M more possible)
(OFF-Exch. ESIs: 34K confirmed; Rand study finds up to 8.2M more possible)
