In my latest piece for healthinsurance.org, I list seven reasons why other states should follow the District of Columbia's lead by requiring that all individual market healthcare policies be sold on the ACA exchange exclusively...along with, I also admit, three issues which would have to be dealt with in doing so.
Alexander Bill Would Extend Subsidies to Off-Exchange Plans
Sen. Lamar Alexander is introducing a bill Wednesday that would extend Affordable Care Act subsidies to plans off of the exchanges for some eligible consumers.
I don't usually post a whole lot about the small group market (other than occasionally trying to track how many SHOP enrollees there are by state and nationally), but this seems like pretty good news given how chaotic the individual market continues to be...
Covered California for Small Business Announces Rate Change and Expanded Coverage Choices for 2017
Statewide weighted average rate increase is less than 6 percent.
Blue Shield of California expands to Full PPO network statewide.
Kaiser Permanente moves into Santa Cruz County.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced today the rates and expansion plans for its small group health insurance exchange, Covered California for Small Business. The statewide weighted average rate increase is 5.9 percent, for employers and their employees beginning Jan. 1, 2017, which is down from the 7.2 percent increase in 2016.
Lindeen Finds Blue Cross Rate Increases Unreasonable
HELENA – Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance Monica Lindeen announced today that following an extensive rate review process, her office has found the rates filed for health insurance in the individual and small-group marketplaces by Health Care Services Corp. (doing business as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana) to be unreasonable. This is the first time that such a finding has been issued.
Over the past week or so there was a lot of tense negotiations and confusion about whether or not ConnectiCare, the 2nd largest carrier on Connecticut's exchange and the largest in CT's individual market overall, would bail on participating on AccessHealthCT next year. They bumped up their rate hike request not once but twice, from 14.3% to 17.4% to 27.1%, and when state regulators stuck with 17.4% and refused to budge any higher, they threatened to file a lawsuit and drop out of the exchange. As of last Friday, it looked like they were indeed pulling out.
Days after declaring it would leave the state’s health insurance exchange, ConnectiCare has decided not to drop out of the marketplace, much to the relief of many — including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Lots of stuff happening fast & furious these days as #OE4 approaches. Instead of individual posts, I'm gonna cram 7 state updates into a single one...and am also cheating a bit by cribbing off of excellent work by Louise Norris over at healthinsurance.org (which is fair, since she also gets some of her data from me as well):
ALABAMA: Here's what my requested rate hike table looked like for Alabama on August 1st:
As noted by Nicholas Bagley, Richard Mayhew and myself several times over the past year, Marco Rubio's Risk Corridor Massacre, which cut the ACA's risk corridor program off at the knees back in December 2014, has caused a tremendous amount of damage to the country in the form of helping kick 800,000 people off their healthcare policies, putting several hundred people out of work and could potentially cost taxpayers several billion dollars more than it would have cost if the program hadn't been interfered with in the first place...for no reason whatsoever. Rubio can't even argue that it was worth it for his own personal gain, since his stunt didn't even gain him the Republican Presidential nomination.
I know, the headline is clickbait, but hear me out; lemme play Devil's Advocate for a moment here.
Last week, when writing about Phoenix Health Plans becoming the latest carrier to drop out of the Arizona exchange, I noted that...
Ironically, this may prove to have a silver lining, according to one expert:
If Cigna decides to stick with the exchange marketplace, it will have access to a solid mix of healthy and unhealthy patients, said Jim Hammond, publisher of the Hertel Report.
"The first question is, will Cigna stay in," Hammond said. "If Cigna bails, then we have a real problem and the state and federal officials are going to have to figure out what to do about it. They've made this mandate and there's no way for people to actually meet the mandate."
Once an insurance carrier gets a decent mix of healthy and unhealthy patients, and targets the unhealthy patients with special programs, then it should be fine, he said.
I didn't really make a big thing out of it, but thought it was an interesting perspective.
The Massachusetts Health Connector has posted their latest monthly enrollment report (through the end of August), and the news is good. As I note every month:
Unlike most states, the Massachusetts Health Connector has not only seen no net attrition since the end of Open Enrollment, but has actually seen a net increase in enrollment...mainly due to their unique "ConnectorCare" policies, which are fully Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) but have additional financial assistance for those who qualify and which are available year-round instead of being limited to the open enrollment period.
The amount of the increase depends on which "official" number you start with; the MA exchange claimed 196,554 people as of 1/31/16...while the ASPE report gives it as 213,883 as of the next day....yet their March report claims 208,000 effectuated enrollees as of February.
