Several quick tidbits out of the District of Columbia from the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority May board meeting:
Their preliminary 2019 premium rate filings were originally due by May 1st, but this was bumped out until June 1st. Not available publicly yet, however.
The board voted unanimously to restrict Short-Term, Limited Duration plans to no more than 3 months at a time and to make them non-renewable in order to prevent them from further damaging the ACA individual market. They basically went with the parameters laid out under the newly-signed Maryland law. This won't become official unless the DC Council approves it, however (which I strongly suspect will happen).
More than 95% of healthcare groups that have commented on President Trump’s effort to weaken Obama-era health insurance rules criticized or outright opposed the proposals, according to a Times review of thousands of official comment letters filed with federal agencies.
The extraordinary one-sided outpouring came from more than 300 patient and consumer advocates, physician and nurse organizations and trade groups representing hospitals, clinics and health insurers across the country, the review found.
For a couple of months now, I've been attempting to track a slew of state-based "ACA 2.0" bills slowly winding their way through various state legislatures. However, this is really a bit of a misnomer, since some of these bills aren't so much about expanding the ACA as they are about protecting it from various types of undermining or sabotage from the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans.
Once again: The "Blue Leg" of the Stool covers everything which ACA-compliant individual health insurance carriers are required to include: Guaranteed Issue, Community Rating, 10 Essential Health Benefits, a Minimum 60% Actuarial Value rating, no Annual or Lifetime Caps on coverage, and a long list of mandatory Preventative Services at no out-of-pocket cost when done in-network.
Kris Haltmeyer, a vice president at the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, told reporters that the premium increases were in part due to the repeal of ObamaCare’s individual mandate in the Republican tax reform bill in December...“With the repeal of the individual mandate and the failure of Congress to enact stabilization legislation, we are expecting premiums to go up substantially,” Haltmeyer said.
...He said the premium increases are “related to the loss of the mandate and then underlying medical costs.”
“Those two things have the most impact on the rate increases,” he added.
...Oh, and what comes after mandate repeal and underlying medical costs? You guessed it: #ShortAssPlans
The stage is set for a showdown in the Virginia Senate on Tuesday over a budget compromise negotiated by Senate Finance Co-Chairman Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, and House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, to expand the state’s Medicaid program and pay for the state’s share through a new tax on hospital revenues that also would boost Medicaid payments for inpatient provider care.
This evening brought three major pieces of ACA-related news out of three different states:
First, in California, the State Senate passed SB-910, which wouldn't just limit short-term plans, but would outright prohibit them altogether. To my knowledge, CA would be the only state* where STPs wouldn't be allowed at all:
(*Correction: It turns out that New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts also ban Short-Term Plans as well, although according to Dania Palanker of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, California would be the first state to explicitly outlaw short-term plans as opposed to simply stating that all policies have to meet certain standards.)
SACRAMENTO – Today, the State Senate approved passage of Senate Bill 910, which prohibits the sale of short term limited duration health insurance in California.
Having a doctor holding elected office is kind of hit or miss (former HHS Secretary Tom "Fly Me!" Price was an orthopedic surgeon, for instance, while Rand "Kneel before Aqua Buddha!" Paul is supposedly a "self-certified" opthamologist), but once in awhile it can be a very good thing.
Case in point: Ralph Northam, the new Governor of Virginia, a former Army doctor and pediatric neurologist, who just formally vetoed not one, not two, but four different GOP-passed healthcare bills, each of which would have further weakened and damaged the ACA individual market risk pool:
RICHMOND—Governor Ralph Northam today vetoed Senate Bills 844, 934, 935, and 964, which would put Virginians at risk of being underinsured, result in rapidly increasing Marketplace premiums, and undermine key protections in the Affordable Care Act. Governor Northam remains committed to expanding health care for nearly 400,000 uninsured Virginians, return millions to the state budget, and reduce Marketplace premiums. The Governor’s full veto statements are below.
I've written quite a few entries bashing the Short-Term Plan portion of Donald Trump's executive order opening up the floodgates on non-ACA compliant policies. However, I've written far less about the other shoe he's dropping: Association Health Plans, or AHPs. In fact, while I discussed AHPs briefly in Part Two of my Risk Pool video, the only blog post I've written to date which specifically focuses on them just quoted from this Avalere Health article:
Association Health Plans (AHPs) are health insurance arrangements sponsored by an industry, trade, or professional association that provide health coverage to their members—typically small businesses and their employees. Health insurance coverage offered through AHPs aims to make coverage available and affordable for small groups and individual employees. Importantly, these arrangements are currently governed by state and federal requirements and are subject to state oversight, including standards related to premiums and benefit requirements.
A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump's former HHS Secretary Tom Price openly (and rather casually) admitted at the World Health Care Conference that the GOP's repeal of the ACA's individual mandate will "harm the pool in the exchange markets & drive up costs" when it actually goes into effect in 2019.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s plan to expand access to skimpy short-term health insurance policies, as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, would affect more people and cost the government more money than the administration estimated, an independent federal study says.
Normally, I don't start posting natoinal projections for my annual Rate Hike Project until I have at least filing data for at least a dozen or so states because the national weighted average jumps around so much early on. A "national average" of, say, 10% based on numbers from, say, Vermont, Wyoming and the District of Columbia (collective population: 1.9 million people) is gonna change radically once you add California or Florida to the mix if they're looking at a 20% hike, for example.
Having said that, seeing how advocacy organization Protect Our Care has decided to launch their own version of my Rate Hike Project, and seeing how I do have preliminary 2019 rate increase projections from at one large state (Virginia) and two mid-sized states (Maryland and Oregon), I've decided to go ahead and start posting the national projections early, with a major caveat that the national average will likely change dramatically until at least 2/3 of the states have been plugged in.
