Housecommitteechair:Sebeliusliedwhenshesaid

House committee chair: Sebelius lied when she said she doesn’t know how many ObamaCare enrollees paid their first premiums

posted at 2:01 pm on March 26, 2014 by Allahpundit

Dave Camp uses the more delicate term “evasive and perhaps misleading” in his letter to her but it’s clear enough what he means. This wouldn’t be the first term the White House has been, ahem, evasive and perhaps misleading when it comes to enrollment data either. Sebelius and Jay Carney spent last October hemming and hawing over why they hadn’t released any early enrollment figures yet, insisting it’d be premature to do so and that numbers would be reported at regular intervals. Turns out they had a daily dashboard on Healthcare.gov that was keeping them updated all along. The big take on day one, as you might recall, was … six enrollments. Nationwide.

This new lie is more fun than the earlier one, though, just for the sheer balls required to muster the spin they’re using to deflect it.

Camp (R-Mich.) and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) say they have uncovered “new evidence” that “strongly suggests that the administration knows who has enrolled and paid their first month’s premium.”

The congressmen pointed to an online regulations portal run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that says insurers are required to inform the agency of “the full enrollment and payment profile” for consumers on a monthly basis…

“As we have said previously, information about who has paid his or her premium is collected by individual issuers and is not reported to CMS directly by enrollees,” HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in a statement.

“Until the automated payment and reporting system is completed and fully tested, and CMS is able to access individual enrollment and payment information from individual 834 forms, the payment information that CMS receives from insurers is neither final nor complete,” she added. “When we have accurate and reliable data regarding premium payments, we will make that information available.”

In other words, insurers are required to report to CMS every month how many people have paid. The data exists and is right at CMS’s fingertips; even if it’s incomplete, the rate of payment among insurers who have already reported will give us some sense of the rate of payment nationally.

But CMS, which built a website that didn’t work for two months and continues to have back-end problems to this day, doesn’t feel comfortable trusting outside entities. They’d prefer to use their own data, which … doesn’t exist yet because the website’s payment system still hasn’t been built. And they also want to be sure the numbers they give the public are “final” and “complete,” even though the whole reason people keep bugging them for payment data is that CMS’s own highly touted monthly enrollment figures aren’t remotely “final” or “complete” without it. Remember, if you missed the deadline to pay your first premium, your enrollment will be canceled; if it’s true, as anecdotal evidence suggests, that fully 20 percent of new enrollees failed to pay on time, that means HHS’s latest enrollment number of 5+ million as of March 1st could be off by a million people. If they were sincerely worried about misleading the public with incomplete figures, they’d refuse to release enrollment data at all until they knew for sure how many people were, or would be, bounced from the rolls on nonpayment grounds. As it is, they’re more than happy to release crap numbers which they know are artificially inflated in the name of doing what they can to help Democrats facing reelection this fall.

While we’re on the subject, via the Free Beacon, here’s another brazen lie Sebelius told Congress a few weeks ago. Exit question via Dan McLaughlin: At what point is a special prosecutor finally on the table here?

Tags: data, Dave Camp, Department of Health and Human Services, enrollment, first, month, portal, premiums, sebelius, ways and means

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

Report:OnlyhalfofnewObamaCareenrolleesin

Report: Only half of new ObamaCare enrollees in 17 states have paid first month of premiums

posted at 11:31 am on December 31, 2013 by Allahpundit

No way to know yet if the federal exchange is also seeing a 50 percent payment rate system-wide, but if it is, we’re looking at close to 500,000 people whose new coverage will begin tomorrow in some sort of limbo. Or maybe more, actually: At least one insurance company is seeing payment rates closer to 35 percent, and the Journal found one man who signed up in late November who still hasn’t been billed yet by his new insurer. That’s the fruit of chaos imposed on the industry by Obama and HHS in moving around deadlines haphazardly to protect themselves politically. They moved the sign-up deadline back nine days, to Christmas Eve, and then they “suggested” that the payment deadline be moved back to January 10th, all but forcing insurers to cover people retroactively. Expect a new “suggestion” for them to move the payment deadline back further into January, as some insurers have already done, if that 500,000 can’t get their acts together in time to pony up the 10th.

How chaotic is it right now? One insurance exec predicts that people will be bringing printouts from the exchange websites to the doctor in lieu of insurance cards because the industry simply can’t meet the logistical demands created by the White House to send everyone their card in time.

Normally, insurers require payment for coverage before the coverage begins. They count an enrollment as complete only when the first month’s premium has been received from a customer. As of Monday, however, only about half of enrollees billed for plans offered by more than 100 insurers in 17 states had paid their first month’s premium, said Mark Waterstraat, chief strategy officer at Benaissance, a third-party billing firm that works for those insurers…

After the federal government extended the deadline to sign up for coverage from Dec. 15 to Christmas Eve, most insurers in turn extended their deadlines for payment, some as late as Jan. 10 for coverage starting Jan. 1. Some, like Independence Blue Cross, a Philadelphia-area insurer, pushed the deadline as far back as Jan. 28. Humana Inc. said Monday that it would accept payments as late as Jan. 31.

Independence Blue Cross is pre-emptively sending insurance cards to consumers before they have paid, said Brian Lobley, a senior vice president. The insurer dispatched 20 workers over the weekend to create the plastic membership cards and ship them to presumptive enrollees. The plans won’t be “active” until the new customers actually pay Independence, but mailing the cards early will allow them to start using their plans right away once they have paid, Mr. Lobley said.

I’m guessing HHS will announce this weekend, while the media’s still in its holiday slumber, that they’re “suggesting” insurers follow Humana’s lead and extend their own payment deadlines from the 10th to the 31st. That’s the beauty of these White House “fixes”: There’s no limit to them, really, because insurers are in no position to resist even if what Obama wants doesn’t technically carry the force of law. HHS already threatened to exclude companies that don’t comply with its every ass-covering whim from the exchanges next year, a potentially terrible financial blow given how many millions more consumers will have been forced onto them by then. This is what a government takeover of health care looks like.

Tags: Department of Health and Human Services, enrollment, first, month, ObamaCare, premiums, wsj

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

Surprise:Insurersextenddeadlinetopayfirstmonth

Surprise: Insurers extend deadline to pay first month of ObamaCare plan premiums until January 10th

posted at 4:01 pm on December 18, 2013 by Allahpundit

The deadline was December 31st, but faced with the prospect of 50 percent or more of their new enrollees going uncovered in January due to nonpayment, some individual insurers had already begun granting grace periods. Then HHS announced that it was strongly urging (wink wink) insurers across the industry to extend their deadlines too. And now, inevitably, here comes the umbrella group America’s Health Insurance Plans to say that its members have done exactly that.

No matter how messy the White House’s mismanagement of O-Care’s rollout gets, the insurance industry has no choice now but to try to clean it up. You bought the ticket, guys. Enjoy the ride.

As a result of the change, individuals who pick plans by Dec. 23 will be considered covered as of Jan. 1 as long as they pay their first month’s premiums by Jan. 10. Previously, payment had been required by Dec. 31…

In addition to asking insurers to allow consumers more time to process payments, HHS asked insurers to treat out-of-network providers as in-network, to continue to allow individuals to refill prescriptions that had been covered under previous plans and to accept partial payments for January premiums. AHIP did not address those requests in its statement.

It’s only the deadline for payment that’s changed, not the December 23rd deadline for enrollment, but we’ll see how that goes during the next few weeks. I’m sure the White House would love to extend the enrollment deadline into January too, with coverage retroactive to January 1st, but that’s more dangerous for insurers since in theory it would allow someone to sign up for insurance after they’ve already had an expensive accident. Maybe HHS could allow for retroactive enrollment with the caveat that claims over a certain amount won’t be covered? Or maybe they’ll just shovel some “risk corridor” money at insurers to cover any heavy losses from people who sign up to pay for pricey treatment that’s already been incurred. There are bound to be good-faith cases next month of people who really did try to sign up before this month’s deadline but were thwarted by lingering problems with Healthcare.gov or by the fact that the federal data hub still isn’t working well enough to let them enroll directly with insurers as a workaround. (At least one state exchange website has performed so terribly that some locals think they should switch to Healthcare.gov because it’s … more reliable.) Once you let those people enroll retroactively, why not let others whose attempt at enrollment in December wasn’t quite as diligent enroll too? All the better to pad HHS’s sign-up numbers.

But that raises a bigger question: Why would insurers further complicate their lives by bending over backwards this way for procrastinating consumers? Sure, they’d like to have some extra revenue in January by letting latecomers sneak in before January 10th, but insurers forgo revenue all the time by sticking to preset deadlines. Is this simply a little Christmas generosity on the industry’s part? No, silly: They were threatened by the federal government.

Health industry consultant Kip Piper said HHS doesn’t have the authority to enforce what he calls these “political requests” [for deadline extensions]. But HHS said it will consider insurers’ cooperation now when it decides which ones can participate on the insurance exchanges next year.

“They are simultaneously asking insurers to assume the cost and risk of non-payment, taking public credit for it, and threatening insurers with loss of business if they don’t comply,” said Piper, a former government and insurance industry official.

Avik Roy made the same point a few days ago, pointing to the “menacing language” used by HHS in its new regulations urging insurers to comply with its extension “requests.” That should be illegal, says Roy, but is there any insurer bold enough to sue the feds over it, knowing that they might retaliate by booting them from the exchanges just as millions of new consumers are being forced onto them? This is why you don’t do business with the mafia: When they “ask” you for something, there’s no way to say no.

By the way, via Guy Benson, Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog has gone from arguing that the enrollment numbers are far less important than the demographic make-up of the exchange risk pools to arguing that it’s less important than you think that the risk pools contain lots of “young invincibles.” That’s the best evidence yet that HHS is lagging badly in signing up young adults.

Tags: deadline, deductibles, january 10, month, obama, ObamaCare, premiums

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair

Surprise:Insurersbegingrantinggraceperiodstopay

Surprise: Insurers begin granting grace periods to pay first month of premiums on new ObamaCare plans

posted at 3:31 pm on December 12, 2013 by Allahpundit

When you’re staring at 95 percent nonpayment in some cases and an unholy clusterfark in January of people not realizing that their coverage hasn’t taken effect yet, you’re going to do everything you can to mitigate the problem.

And this will mitigate it. A little.

As a deadline approaches for people to sign up for medical insurance under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law, some insurers and state-run online marketplaces are giving shoppers an extra week to pay their first premiums.

The shift to early January from the end of December provides a short grace period for insurers and shoppers to work through any errors in the new policies caused by technology problems dogging enrollment since it opened on October 1…

Aetna Inc, which is selling health insurance on exchanges, or marketplaces, in more than a dozen states, will allow consumers to pay premiums as late as January 8. The Connecticut exchange, Access Health CT, said some shoppers can pay as late as January 7. The Vermont exchange and Covered California have announced similar extensions while Maryland requires payment by January 15.

Cristine Vogel, a Navigant Consulting associate director who has health insurers and providers as clients, said that the grace period is a way for insurers to keep their members at a time when confusion about coverage is expected.

That’ll avert lapses in coverage for people who see the doctor early next month, not realizing that their first payment was already due by New Year’s Eve. Remember, though, according to one expert who spoke to Charles Ornstein about this, insurers can probably expect only half of their customers to have paid up by the December 31st deadline. Even if another 25 percent manage to make payment during the grace period, you’re still looking at thousands of people whose coverage will lapse in January. That’s a political disaster for HHS in the making. Uncle Sam will have to do something about it. But what?

Bob Laszewski says insurers are telling him that only about 20 percent of “enrollees” have made their payments so far. And that’s not all:

As of this week, the 834 transaction error rates (enrollments sent from the government to the health plans) are better than they were in October and early November but are still running in the 5% to 10% range––a place they have been for a number of weeks now.

The Obama administration has still not built the reconciliation computer system needed to clean up the remaining enrollment data issues between HealthCare.gov and the health plans. The health plans have been told to expect an electronic file in the next few days, containing what the feds think are the health plan’s enrollments through November. The plans will then have to figure out how to reconcile the two lists and then fix the problems. Many plans will have thousands of enrollments to reconcile. There will be another such file coming in January for the December enrollments with likely tens of thousands of more names to reconcile. That means that any December errors will have to be fixed before people can be covered, thereby creating additional customer service issues until the files can be cleaned up.

We know there’s already a backlog of tens of thousands of applications in some of the state exchanges, but we don’t know — as usual — how bad it is at the federal level. That’s another incentive for insurers to grant a grace period for people who miss their payments: If their enrollment is voided due to nonpayment and they’re forced to re-enroll, not only is there a chance they’ll sign up with a different insurer, it’s more paperwork for their current insurer even if they decide to stick with them. And thanks to President Bumblefark’s botched website and delayed deadline for enrollment, more paperwork in late December/early January is something insurers simply can’t afford.

Exit question: Is it possible that some people out there don’t yet understand that they’re expected to pay at all? I’m tempted to say no: When you shop on the exchange, the premiums are listed right there in front of you. If anything, the greater risk is that people are paying too much attention to the pricetag and overlooking the fact that their new deductibles might be higher than expected and their provider network smaller than expected. On the other hand, if I’ve learned one thing from blogging polls over the years, it’s that you should never underestimate the stupidity of the very low-information voter. Could it be that there’s someone out there who’s so stupid that he/she thinks insurance in the age of Obama Claus is free? Exit answer: Yes.

Tags: grace period, insurance, insurers, month, obama, ObamaCare, payment, premiums, sebelius

Related Posts:

Source from: hotair