Yetmorehealthcareplansyoumaylike

Yet more health care plans you may like but won’t be able to keep

posted at 5:31 pm on June 21, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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Fixing Obamacare, as opposed to repealing it, is all the rage these days, and there are no shortage of proposals out there to do so. But they don’t all come from the GOP. One measure from Health and Human Services currently making its way through the bureaucratic machine may wind up having Democrats doing battle with the Health Insurance Guru in Chief. In this proposed enhancement, insurance companies would be prohibited from selling fixed-benefit insurance plans as stand-alone policies.

A little-known proposed change to the president’s health care law could result in a new political nightmare for Democrats who are vulnerable in the 2014 midterm elections.

Vox.com says the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposal in March that would prohibit insurers from selling fixed-benefit insurance plans as stand-alone policies.

Fixed-benefit plans are so bare bones they don’t even qualify as actual health insurance under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate – so people who are covered by these plans only are still subject to the penalty unless they qualify for an exemption.

These sorts of plans, with low prices but fixed, limited benefits, are described as being most likely to be held by people looking for a supplement to an existing, lower coverage policy or those seeking a bridge remedy when they are between jobs. Not a panacea for most health insurance shoppers to be sure, but a useful tool to have available if you’re looking for some flexibility when money is tight.

Keeping such plans as an option isn’t just desirable to the little guy trying to figure out a solution. It’s also supported by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which has plenty of Democrat-appointed members. If this goes through – which looks fairly likely – and the fur begins to fly, it won’t just be Republicans calling the President out on the carpet during some election season frenzy. He’s going to be taking fire from members of his own party who are already facing enough challenges in holding on to their jobs.

This may be horrible for the American people, but hey… it’s Barack Obama’s signature achievement of his presidency. (Aside from ending the war in Iraq, that is.) More to follow.

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Tags: Barack Obama, health care, health insurance, ObamaCare

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WillHHSbothertoprovidealegaljustification

Will HHS bother to provide a legal justification for ObamaCare’s risk corridor program? Inquiring Republicans want to know

posted at 8:31 pm on June 12, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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The Obama administration has lately been attempting to calm the fears of a jittery insurance industry that’s rather concerned about its long-term profitability should the ObamaCare insurance marketplaces not turn out according to plan. In February, the Obama administration was toying with the idea of extending the bailout risk-corridor program — designed to provide money to insurance companies struggling to make ends meet, should the need arise during ObamaCare’s initial phases — beyond its original sunset date set for 2016; and in May, the administration assured insurance companies worried about “unexpectedly” high premiums that they would break the program’s original budget-neutral provision and find even more moolah for the insurance companies if need be. As CMS put it in the relevant regulatory filing, “In the unlikely event of a shortfall for the 2015 program year, HHS recognizes that the Affordable Care Act requires the Secretary to make full payments to issuers. In that event, HHS will use other sources of funding for the risk corridors payments, subject to the availability of appropriations.”

Mmm, hmm. Where, pray tell, might these appropriations come from, if not with the approval of Congress? And, if it comes to that, does the administration really have the authority to carry out this risk-corridor program at its own discretion, at all? This is pretty much the same question Sen. Marco Rubio asked of the administration last fall, and evidently, the White House has yet to deign to provide answers. Via the WFB:

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) sent a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Tuesday, asking whether her agency has the statutory authority for the risk corridor program, which some have called a bailout of the insurance industry.

“Under current law, payments made under the risk corridor program would constitute an unlawful transfer of potentially billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers offering qualified health plans under the president’s health care law,” Sessions and Upton Wrote. …

“HHS may not make payments under Section 1342 absent additional congressional action appropriating funds for such payments,” they wrote.  “Without an explicit appropriation, any money spent on the risk corridor program would be based on an illegal transfer of funds and your agency could be held in violation of the Antideficiency Act.”

The letter raises concerns that HHS has “left open the possibility that it will make payments to health insurance companies under the risk corridor program without seeking additional funding from Congress.”

Sessions and Upton ask Burwell to kindly provide them with HHS’s independent legal analysis on the matter, as well as with a list of the funding sources from which it believes it has the authority to cough up the cash on demand. I do so wonder if the White House will bother to get around to it this time, or even pretend to care about providing legal justifications for what basically amounts to them making things up as they go along.

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Tags: bailouts, health insurance, Obama administration, ObamaCare, premiums, Republicans, risk corridors, risk pool, Sylvia Burwell

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TheadministrationhasquietlystoppedreleasingObamaCareenrollment

The administration has quietly stopped releasing ObamaCare enrollment numbers

posted at 7:01 pm on May 24, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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During the initial open enrollment period, the Obama administration released monthly enrollment reports that — even if they were exasperatingly incomplete and/or doctored in what data they chose to reveal — gave us at least some sort of idea of what was going on with the president’s crowning legislative achievement. Now that the Obama administration has that alleged 8 million sing-ups number to tout, however, they evidently no longer feel the need to even keep up the pretense of releasing regular reports on the law’s progress. As Politico reports (paywall):

The Obama administration has quietly decided to halt its monthly updates on Obamacare enrollment, which were a major pipeline of information about the impact of the health law heading into the 2014 campaign season. ‘HHS issued monthly enrollment reports during the first marketplace open enrollment period in order to provide the best understanding of enrollment activities as it was taking place,’ an HHS spokeswoman emailed. ‘Now that this time period has ended, we will look at future opportunities to share information about the marketplace that is reliable and accurate over time as further analysis can be done but we do not anticipate monthly reports.’ The agency offered no information about the timing or level of detail in any future updates.

Yes, the initial open enrollment period is over, but people can still sign up for health insurance through the exchanges if they experience a qualifying “life event” (job loss, new baby, etc.). That means that the number of the ObamaCare-insured could continue to rise throughout the year, but people can also still drop their newfound health insurance at any time for any number of reasons — meaning that the number could fall, too. As Michael Cannon explains at Forbes:

I have written at some length about the huge incentives ObamaCare creates to drop one’s coverage and wait until sick to re-enroll, and how those incentives threaten the stability of the law’s health insurance Exchanges. Basically, if you drop your coverage, (1) avoiding the penalty is fairly straightforward, (2) you can get re-enroll the following January no matter how sick you get, and (3) in many cases, ObamaCare lets you enroll in coverage before January, again no matter how sick you get. If healthy enrollees become aware of and act on this perverse incentive, the Exchange pools will grow sicker, premiums will rise further, and the Exchanges could collapse.

Gaba expects enrollments to continue to rise each month. But if attrition overwhelms new enrollment, it could mean that consumers find Exchange plans too expensive relative to job-based coverage, or that the poor quality of Exchange coverage is causing people to flee, or that people are gaming the system in the above manner.

In other words, the Obama administration doesn’t really know what’s going to happen with the trajectory of the enrollment numbers — and they don’t really want us to find out, especially not before the midterms while they still have that awesome 8 million “mission accomplished” number to trumpet. I suppose we shouldn’t expect anything less from The Most Transparent Administration, Evah.

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Tags: Democrats, exchange, health insurance, midterms, ObamaCare, transparency

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CBO:ObamaCarepremiumsandhealthcarespendingwillrise

CBO: ObamaCare premiums and healthcare spending will rise by less than expected, because…

posted at 6:41 pm on April 15, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The Congressional Budget Office released a report this morning that has received a lot of attention from ObamaCare’s many staunch media advocates because it essentially concludes that the cost of expanding coverage through the exchanges will be billions less than the CBO was predicting just a couple of months ago. That’s great news for the president’s crowning legislative achievement, right?

Health-insurance premiums for plans sold on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges will be lower than previously expected, according to a report released Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.

The findings, by Congress’s nonpartisan spending analysts, result largely from the fact that insurance companies have redesigned plans on the government-run exchanges to shave costs. CBO found that individual policies on those marketplaces have narrower networks of doctors and lower reimbursement rates for health-care providers than is typical of employer-sponsored health plans.

As a result, CBO expects the federal government to spend about $165 billion less over the next decade on subsidizing health-insurance plans for lower earners than the office projected two months ago. Total spending on those subsidies is projected at $1.032 trillion between 2015 and 2024. The report was part of a broader federal spending update released Monday.

Did you catch that? Let’s go straight to the report for a closer look:

A crucial factor in the current revision was an analysis of  the characteristics of plans offered through the exchanges in 2014. Previously, CBO and JTC had expected that  those plans’ characteristics would closely resemble the characteristics of employment-based plans throughout the projection period. However, the plans being offered through the exchanges this year appear to have, in general, lower payment rates for providers, narrower networks of providers, and tighter management of their subscribers’ use of health care than employment-based plans do. …

The lower exchange premiums and revisions to the other characteristics of insurance plans that are incorporated into CBO and JCT’s current estimates have small effects on the agencies’ projections of exchange enrollment. Although lower premiums will tend to increase enrollment, narrower networks and more tightly managed benefits will tend to reduce the attractiveness of plans and thereby decrease enrollment. The net effect on projected enrollment in the exchanges is small.

In a nutshell, the CBO initially made its projections under the assumption that the plans offered through the exchange would be largely similar in terms of benefits to the sorts of plans being offered by employers — but that definitely isn’t going to be the case. The narrowed networks that insurers are using to keep costs down and the lower reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals are things that neither consumers nor providers tend to like in the long run — which will likely mean more strain on the system and higher costs further down the road.

Tags: CBO, doctors, exchanges, health insurance, network, ObamaCare, premiums

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Report: Obamacare causing insurance prices to skyrocket

Report:Obamacarecausinginsurancepricestoskyrocket

Brutal: Democratic poll finds Obama’s base is ready to stay home in November

Brutal:DemocraticpollfindsObama’sbaseisready

TheWhiteHousereadiesfortheObamaCare-signuphome

The White House readies for the ObamaCare-signup home stretch

posted at 5:21 pm on March 3, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

There’s officially less than one month to go for the open enrollment period during which us lucky Americans have the munificent opportunity to sign up for health insurance or else start paying the attendant tax — although, for all we know, the Obama administration will end up extra-legally rejiggering that deadline, too, if the numbers don’t start accelerating in their direction within the next couple of weeks. Ergo, cue the final marketing push, via Politico:

The final month of the White House enrollment campaign isn’t about daily events in Washington or speeches aimed at a national audience. Instead, Obama, Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama, cabinet members and senior administration officials are showering attention in very targeted ways on African Americans, Latinos, young people and the top 25 cities with the most uninsured Americans.

They’re hitting The View and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. But what’s less noticed is how they’re popping up on syndicated radio shows, at local enrollment events and on social media networks, hawking health insurance like product pitchmen. …

“Folks only have about five weeks left,” Obama said on the Russ Parr Morning Show, urging people to sign up on HealthCare.gov or call a toll-free number. “Don’t believe all the misinformation that’s out there because that is all politics and that is all directed toward me coming from the other side. Check for yourself whether this makes sense.” …

“In the final push, we’ll be ramping up efforts to reach the uninsured directly where they are,” said White House health care strategist Tara McGuinness, “in their communities, on the radio stations they listen to, the programs they watch, the websites they read, through their family members and people in their community who know them and want them to get covered, and by encouraging celebrities and athletes to get the word out.”

“Don’t believe all the misinformation out there” because it’s “all politics” directed towards him? Kinda’ like how Harry Reid insisted that all of the ObamaCare horror stories out there, aren’t, or something? Or how ObamaCare actually makes very little economic sense for young people, and relies on their outsized input to pay for older, sicker participants in order for the system to work? ‘Cause hey, by all means, young people, do go check out for yourselves whether this makes any long-term sense.

Tags: Barack Obama, enrollment, health insurance, Joe Biden, ObamaCare, White House

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ObamaCareenrollmentnowupto4million,administration

ObamaCare enrollment now up to 4 million, administration says

posted at 8:01 pm on February 25, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The other week, the Obama administration ‘informed’ us that ObamaCare enrollment from October 1st through February 1st had hit 3.3 million signups — excellent progress, they insisted, but most unfortunately, still a far cry from the necessary progress to achieving their open enrollment goal of seven million insurees never you mind. In a blog post this evening, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner updated that figure with the first few weeks of February’s supposed signups, deeming the uptick “another significant milestone“:

As we head into the last five weeks of this historic open enrollment period, millions of Americans are taking advantage of the new choices they now have to access affordable, quality health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.  The most recent data indicate that approximately 4 million people have now signed up for a private health insurance plan through the Federal and State-based Marketplaces since October 1.  A full enrollment report for February will be released in mid-March.

With individuals and families enrolling in coverage every day, we continue to see strong demand nationwide from consumers who want access to quality, affordable coverage.  Our outreach efforts are in full force with community partners and local officials participating in hundreds of events each week and enrollment assistors are helping more and more people enroll in coverage.

No word on the demographic makeup of these enrollees and whether the Obama administration’s youth enrollment push is having any discernible effect in persuading young invincibles that they really need ObamaCare — and, as ever, the number of people who have actually paid for their premiums and have therefore activated their coverage, remains stubbornly elusive. Barely one month to go before the signup window closes — as Obama so jovially reminded on OFA crowd this afternoon:

Tags: Barack Obama, Department of Health and Human Services, enrollment, exchange, health insurance, ObamaCare

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ObamaCare enrollment up to 4 million, president says

ObamaCareenrollmentnowupto4million,administration

ObamaCare enrollment now up to 4 million, administration says

posted at 8:01 pm on February 25, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The other week, the Obama administration ‘informed’ us that ObamaCare enrollment from October 1st through February 1st had hit 3.3 million signups — excellent progress, they insisted, but most unfortunately, still a far cry from the necessary progress to achieving their open enrollment goal of seven million insurees never you mind. In a blog post this evening, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner updated that figure with the first few weeks of February’s supposed signups, deeming the uptick “another significant milestone“:

As we head into the last five weeks of this historic open enrollment period, millions of Americans are taking advantage of the new choices they now have to access affordable, quality health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.  The most recent data indicate that approximately 4 million people have now signed up for a private health insurance plan through the Federal and State-based Marketplaces since October 1.  A full enrollment report for February will be released in mid-March.

With individuals and families enrolling in coverage every day, we continue to see strong demand nationwide from consumers who want access to quality, affordable coverage.  Our outreach efforts are in full force with community partners and local officials participating in hundreds of events each week and enrollment assistors are helping more and more people enroll in coverage.

No word on the demographic makeup of these enrollees and whether the Obama administration’s youth enrollment push is having any discernible effect in persuading young invincibles that they really need ObamaCare — and, as ever, the number of people who have actually paid for their premiums and have therefore activated their coverage, remains stubbornly elusive. Barely one month to go before the signup window closes — as Obama so jovially reminded on OFA crowd this afternoon:

Tags: Barack Obama, Department of Health and Human Services, enrollment, exchange, health insurance, ObamaCare

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Anotheronebitesthedust:Nevada’sObamaCareexchange

Another one bites the dust: Nevada’s ObamaCare exchange director resigns

posted at 8:01 pm on February 20, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Nevada’s independently designed online ObamaCare exchange hasn’t been quite the unmitigated disaster on the level of, say, Oregon’s zero-functionality website, but the Silver State has certainly had its own unique slew of technological glitches and processing problems. Just last week, the state drastically lowered their enrollment targets to less than half of their initial projections, moving the goalposts from 118,000 signups by March 31st to just 50,000. I’d guess that even that might be a little on the optimistic side, seeing as how only 24,000 had selected plans on the exchange as of early February, and of those, only about 16,000 have actually paid their premiums to ensure coverage.

Meeting lower enrollment targets for Nevada’s online health insurance exchange will still be challenging as the system continues to grapple with website and call center issues, a state official said Thursday.

“It has been a difficult month,” Jon Hager, executive director of the exchange, said in a report to the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange board. “We have had website problems, long wait times at the call center, frustrated partners, frustrated consumers and low enrollment.”

Hager outlined immediate goals that reflect issues that have plagued the system from the start: Fix the website and fix the call center.

But Hager won’t be there to oversee those attempted fixes, because he just joined the ex-directors of Minnesota, Maryland, Hawaii, and Oregon among the ranks of the resigned. Via the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The executive director of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange is resigning.

Jon Hager, who came under fire in a Feb. 13 exchange board meeting for cutting March 31 enrollment goals from 118,000 to 50,000, left the agency Thursday afternoon.

Board members told Hager in their meeting that it was time to put together a “disaster recovery plan” to help fix technical problems that have plagued the exchange’s Nevada Health Link website since it launched on Oct. 1.

As for that “disaster recovery plan,” the board is looking at firing Xerox, the contractor that designed the website, as well as straight-up scrapping the effort and joining the federal health exchange — which might be their best option. Their state exchange’s operations are being funded through federal grants this year, but that funding expires in 2015, and Gov. Sandoval has already said that he won’t use state general funds to keep it going. Oof.

Tags: exchange, glitches, health insurance, Nevada, ObamaCare, U.S. states

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It’s come to this. Selling Obamacare with kittens.

It’scometothis.SellingObamacarewithkittens.

HealthCare.Govshuttingdownformaintenance—andjust

HealthCare.Gov shutting down for maintenance — and just in time for Youth Enrollment day!

posted at 6:41 pm on February 11, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

The Obama administration has been waging a steady and targeted campaign in their ever-vigilant quest to persuade young and healthy individuals to sign up for ObamaCare and hence assure that the system has the proper demographic mix to avoid the dreaded death-spiral scenario, but so far, the youth numbers just aren’t what they ought to be. As of mid-January, only about 24 percent of the system’s signups through 2013 were from the coveted 18-to-34 year old age group, and if the administration is going to convince the kids to do their bidding, they’re quickly running out of time as the March 31st deadline approaches.

That’s why they’ve put together a super-targeted nationwide event this weekend to really kick the awareness campaign into high gear, via Red Alert Politics:

Feb. 15 is also National Youth Enrollment Day, where the administration is promoting more than 200 nationwide events where young people can get covered. Groups such as United Way, Young Invincibles, Get Covered America and the American Cancer Society are partnering to promote enrollment through different events.

As Red Alert Politics also points out, however, the big youth event seems to rather… er… oddly timed, via The Hill:

HealthCare.gov will be out of service for two and a half days beginning on Feb. 15 — the last day people can sign up to obtain coverage that begins on March 1.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services announced in a blog post on Monday that the ObamaCare website would be lacking some enrollment functionalities so the Social Security Administration can conduct its annual systems maintenance activities.

The site will be out of order from 3 p.m. on Feb. 15 until 5 a.m. on Tuesday — a period that coincides with the long holiday weekend.

Those seeking coverage by March 1 must have signed up online by Feb. 15, but with the website maintenance, those registering at the last minute won’t be able to find out what plans or subsidies they qualify for.

CMS is directing people to signup through the hotline while the site is down for the long weekend, but my question is why have it down through the weekend at all, rather than 3 A.M. on a Tuesday? Isn’t the weekend the time when most working people and students would have time to sit down and try to enroll, especially since, you know, you’re holding this huge youth outreach campaign the day of the deadline to “get covered” by March 1st? Maybe?

Tags: campaign, exchange, glitches, health insurance, Obama administration, ObamaCare, youth

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Obamaadminlookingatextending“administrativefix”for

Obama admin looking at extending “administrative fix” for noncompliant individual plans — for three years?

posted at 4:21 pm on February 6, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Last November was a particularly — ahem — messy time for President Obama’s crowning legislative achievement. The rollout of the law’s federal exchange website was showcasing newly-plumbed depths of big-government incompetence and obfuscation while millions of insurees in the individual market were balking at notices informing them that their not-comprehensive/expensive-enough healthcare plans were getting cancelled in order to comply with the new standards that ObamaCare had laid down for their guidance. The president’s very own Democrats were desperately floating legislation to enforce the oft-repeated “If you like your plan, you can keep it”-promise that was soon after deemed “The Lie of the Year,” but rather than bother with messy legislation, the Obama administration followed their unilateral employer-mandate delay with an “administrative fix” for these individual plans that would allow insurers to un-cancel cancelled plans for another year.

They hoped that would calm things down for awhile and at least temporarily cushion the spreading revelation that forcing insurees off of inexpensive plans is in fact a feature and not a bug of the law, but that means that a lot of those same uncomfortable conversations are going to be coming due right about the time of the midterms this fall.

Heck, they did it once already — why not extend the “fix” through 2016, really? So what if the decision plagues the already-tottering system with insurance plans that don’t pull their redistributive weight? That’s what risk corridors are for! Via the AP:

The Obama administration is considering an extension of the president’s decision to let people keep their individual insurance policies even if they are not compliant with the health care overhaul, according to two top industry officials.

Avalere Health CEO Dan Mendelson said Thursday that the administration may let policyholders keep that coverage for an additional three years, stressing that no decision has been made. Policymakers are waiting to see what rate hikes health insurers plan for the insurance exchanges that are key to the overhaul’s coverage expansions.

“The administration is entertaining a range of options to ensure that this individual market has stability to it and that would be one thing that they could do,” he said. …

Aetna Inc. Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini also told analysts during a conference call to discuss quarterly earnings that he had heard the plans may be extended. Aetna is the nation’s third-largest health insurer.

Aetna Chief Financial Officer Shawn Guertin said in an interview after the call that there have been discussions about whether the plans should be extended again, but he didn’t have any more details.

Chris Matthews has a point, ya’ll. Honestly, I really just don’t see how anybody could construe labeling President Obama with “lawlessness” as anything but “second-term birtherism.”

And if worst does come to worst, like I said — they’ve always got risk-corridors! Via Scott Gottlieb at Forbes:

Humana announced that it expects to tap the three risk adjustment mechanisms in ObamaCare for between $250 and $450 million in 2014. This amounts to about 25 percent of the insurer’s expected exchange revenue. This money is needed to offset losses that the insurer will take as a result of slower enrollment in its ObamaCare plans, and a skewed risk pool that weighs more heavily toward older and less healthy members than it originally budgeted. …

The company blamed the Obama Administration’s decision late last year to extend grandfathering of individual market plans for the overall deterioration in the risk pool. That means that Humana (like other insurers) was counting on people from the individual market being forced to transition into ObamaCare plans. It’s widely perceived that the Obama Administration counted on that migration as well. But Humana’s statement was a very clear expression of this expectation.

Tags: cancellations, health insurance, Individual Mandate, Obama administration, ObamaCare

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ObamaCarestickershock:Don’tforgetthedeductibles

ObamaCare sticker shock: Don’t forget the deductibles

posted at 1:21 pm on February 3, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

As ever, the fact that health insurers have been hiking up the prices of deductibles as one avenue through which they can help absorb the heightened costs of ObamaCare is not news to anyone who’s been paying attention — which is why a new study pointing to comparable premiums between ObamaCare-offered policies and employer-based policies doesn’t quite paint the whole picture of the law’s effects. Via the Fiscal Times:

According to a report released by PwC’s Health Research Institute, insurance premiums on the new health exchanges are cheaper than those paid by the majority of Americans who have employer-based coverage—partly because of high deductibles.

The report found that the average cost of premiums sold on the Obamacare exchanges is about $5,844 annually —or 4 percent less than the average cost of $6,119 for an employer-provided plan with comparable benefits. …

Still, PwC’s study doesn’t account for other costs to consumers—like deductibles, which are likely to be more expensive under the new plans. A study by HealthPocket Inc. in December found that the average individual deductible for Obamacare’s bronze plan was $5,081 a year—42 percent higher than the average deductible of $3,589 for an individually purchased plan.

“Picking one dimension as PwC and others do gives a distorted picture of what the consumer is likely to experience,” Joe Antos, health policy analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute said. He added that the PwC study also doesn’t mention other changes that affect consumers like insurers narrowing provider access.

Consumers in areas like, say, rural Georgia, where both skyrocketing premiums and heightened deductibles mean that health insurance is making less and less economic sense for a whole slew of people, via WaPo:

If Lee Mullins lived in Pittsburgh, he could buy mid-level health coverage for his family for $940 a month. If he lived in Beverly Hills, he would pay $1,405.

But Mullins, who builds custom swimming pools, lives in southwest Georgia. Here, a similar health plan for his family of four costs $2,654 a month. …

All the dynamics that drive up health costs have coalesced here in southwestern Georgia, pushing up premiums. Expensive chronic conditions such as obesity and cancer are common among the quarter million people in this region. One hospital system dominates the area, leaving little competition. Only one insurer is offering policies in the online marketplace, and many physicians are not participating, limiting consumer choice. …

Even some people who qualify for federal assistance, such as Stacie Brown, owner of a pottery shop, are balking. The cheapest “bronze” plan for Brown, her husband and son would cost the family $300 a month but not begin paying medical bills until they exceeded the $6,300 individual deductible.

Ouch.

Tags: affordable, deductibles, health insurance, insurers, ObamaCare, premiums

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Video:Thatwhole“keepingyourdoctor”thingnot

Video: That whole “keeping your doctor” thing not quite working out for Tennesseans so far

posted at 1:21 pm on January 28, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

That the Obama administration and their fellow Democrats thought that they were doing themselves a political service with their glib and incessant iterations of “if you like you doctor, you can keep your doctor” really is quite the quandary; I suppose it was worth repeating whatever attractive falsehoods they had to in order to pass their crowning legislative achievement, but oh, how heavily that crown lies now that the always very obvious eventuality of insurance companies behaving as rational actors in a wildly manipulated healthcare market is coming due.

The market’s mandated changes mean that insurers are trying to hold down costs by creating smaller, more streamlined networks than those typically available in commercial insurance, and those restrictions are going to translate into fewer options for patients — which is going to come as something of a surprise to the Americans that were assiduously assured that they would be able to keep their doctors.

As millions of new ACA health plans begin 2014 coverage on Wednesday, consumers in some parts of the country, including California, will find that the plans offered under Obamacare give them access to fewer providers than their previous plans or those offered to Americans with job-based health insurance. Narrowing networks — promising select providers higher patient volume in exchange for lower reimbursement rates — is nothing new, but as insurers compete on price in Obamacare’s new exchanges, avoiding expensive hospitals and doctors has new appeal, especially since insurers can no longer exclude sick people or charge them more. …

A recent study suggests limited provider networks could become more common in the years ahead as the ACA takes hold. A Dec. 13 McKinsey study of 20 U.S. metropolitan areas found that two-thirds of ACA plans analyzed had “narrow” or “ultra narrow” networks, with at least 30 percent of top 20 hospitals excluded for coverage. The medium premium for plans with narrower networks, according to the study, was 26 percent lower than comparable benefit packages with broad networks.

And in less populated regions, the effects of these smaller networks is likely to be even more acute — as several Tennesseans have been discovering over this past month, via the Free Beacon:

WSMV’s Nancy Amons reported two cases of Obamacare enrollees who have been notified that they will no longer be able to see doctors they were able to visit when they were on their previous plan.

Shawnna Simpson’s fifteen year old daughter was hurt last week in a cheerleading accident. Simpson called her family doctor and learned that they do not accept her current health insurance plan, BlueCross Network E.

“We have health insurance at this point that is worthless,” Simpson said of the plan that she pays $600 a month for. … We can’t use it in the county that we live” she said.

BlueCross Network E is a micro network – a very small network with limited doctors and hospitals. Neither Vanderbilt nor TriStar are in the network.

Tags: doctors, exchanges, health insurance, ObamaCare, Tennessee

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ObamaCaregoingforyouthswithanOlympicsad

ObamaCare going for youths with an Olympics ad blitz

posted at 6:51 pm on January 8, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Are enough young and healthy people signing up for health insurance plans through the ObamaCare exchanges to balance out the new and costlier risk pools created by older and sicker individuals more likely to be interested in doing so? We don’t know, because the White House is flatly refusing to tell us — which doesn’t seem too bode well for them (you know that they would be reveling in the release of that information if the numbers were on their side), and they certainly aren’t slowing down on their sustained PR effort to convince the all-important youth demographic that ObamaCare is just about the best thing that will ever happen to them. Via ABC:

The White House is planning to make a major play to sign up young and healthy Americans for Obamacare when the Winter Olympics open next month.

The Department of Health and Human Services will launch a TV ad blitz to take advantage of anticipated increased viewership on NBC stations which will carry the Olympic coverage between Feb. 7 and 23, an administration official confirmed to ABC News.

The official said the ads would run in markets with the highest rates of uninsured, but declined to specify the locations or the amount that would be spent.

The ads will encourage uninsured people, particularly young adults, to enroll in Obamacare coverage before the March 31 deadline.

No word on exactly how big the buy is or what the ads will look like, but it’s probably a good call on the advertising front — Wide audience? Check. High-injury extreme sports? Check. Advantageous and prolonged timing smack in the middle of the latter half of the enrollment period? Check — and it sounds like the White House is going to need it.

Tags: advertising, health insurance, ObamaCare, Olympics, young

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Source from: hotair

CoverOregon:Ifyouhaven’theardfromus

Cover Oregon: If you haven’t heard from us by Monday… you should probably look for alternate coverage

posted at 7:01 pm on December 21, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

How did Oregon manage to go from one of the most enthusiastically pro-ObamaCare, gung-ho exchange-builders in the country to these shambles of lost administrative dignity? Two of their highest-ranking officials in charge of coordinating what they for months advertised as what would be a smooth, online, and hipster-friendly insurance-buying experience are already on the outs, and the 400 or so navigators they hired when they realized (too late) that they were in over their heads haven’t been quite enough to cope with the logistical struggle of signing people up for government-run insurance minus a functional website. Ergo, reports The Oregonian:

Oregon’s troubled health insurance exchange began robocalling applicants Friday, warning them that if they don’t receive enrollment confirmation by Monday, they should seek coverage elsewhere for Jan. 1.

“If you haven’t heard from us by Dec. 23, it is unlikely your application will be processed for Jan. 1 insurance coverage,” a woman’s voice on the pre-recorded call from Cover Oregon says. “If you want to be sure you have insurance coverage starting Jan. 1, you have other options.”

It’s yet another sign that the health insurance exchange’s technological breakdowns will prevent some — perhaps many — Oregonians from getting subsidized coverage Jan. 1, despite Gov. John Kitzhaber’s previous assurances otherwise. Out of more than 65,000 applicants, the exchange reports enrolling nearly 30,000, but only about 11,000 of them in private insurance plans.

The calls also suggest the exchange’s problems will prevent many of those individuals from receiving tax credits or subsidies in January, even though they qualify for them.

Er… why are they just telling insurance-seeking Oregonians this now? If they really have 11,000 people now enrolled in private plans, then they have been making some very slow but steady progress on the larger heap of applications they have going over the past week or so — but they must have known for awhile now that there was no way in heck they were going to be able to process the lot of the applications submitted by December 23rd in time to begin coverage January 1st, what with the slow and often erroneous processing that is part and parcel of doing things via paper application. This really is turning into an unmitigated logistical nightmare — and just in time for Christmas!

Tags: exchanges, health insurance, ObamaCare, Oregon

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Source from: hotair