Chris0nllyn
Well-Known Member
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/u...ew-law-did-not-pay-premiums-on-time.html?_r=0
Of course, asking the White House to provide exact figures is like pulling teeth. They don't have that info, and apparently have no idea how to find it out. Luckily, (Republican) members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee did some digging. They sent letters to all the insurers operating in the federal health exchange, which covers 36 states, and asked for some very specific information. How many people have paid their first month’s premium? How many people have not? What age groups do the people who have paid fall into?
http://energycommerce.house.gov/sit....house.gov/files/letters/20140313Insurers.pdf
They then found out that only 67% of individuals and families that had selected a health plan in the federally facilitated marketplace had paid their first month’s premium and therefore completed the enrollment process. Nationwide, only 25 percent of paid enrollees are ages 18 to 34.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/pre...re-april-15-only-67-percent-enrollees-federal
If only 67% of the 8 million sign-ups have paid, then that reduces total enrollment down to just over 5 million. And since the administration has stressed that it’s important to have a healthy demographic mix—ideally about 39%of enrollees should be between the ages of 18 and 34—the 25%figure doesn’t look so great either.
BUT....
There are some problems with the report. It ignored some of the bigger states that are running their own exchanges, like California and New York, and, more importantly, it reported a payment figure that was current as of April 15—despite the fact that a big chunk of the sign-ups were not required to pay until the first week of May, when their coverage went into effect. Some of those people hadn’t paid, but they hadn’t blown a deadline either.
Today, the Energy & Commerce Committee is holding a hearing following up on the non-payment issue featuring testimony from health insurers. Based on testimony, it's going to repeate what we already know. The last report wasn't great and reliable guide to how many people will end up paying, and that the actual non-payment rate is somewhere between 80 and 90 percent, depending on the plan and the region.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...ost-obamacare-customers-paying-first-premiums
Of course Liberals are already crowing about the industry because it proves the GOP report wrong. The House GOP botched this one, but today’s testimonies leave us mostly back where we started.
A fifteen percent reduction from the 8 million sign-ups the administration reports means cutting total enrollment by 1.2 million people, dropping actual enrollment to about 6.8 million. That’s pretty close to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) original projection of 7 million exchange sign-ups, and it’s higher than the CBO’s revised projection of 6 million sign-ups, but it’s not a small cut. Even if the reduction is somewhat smaller—say, 12 percent, that’s still nearly a million enrollments chopped off the administration’s sign-up total.
Then there's the duplicate enrollments issue. How many? Who knows, AHIP hasn't given an estimate.
http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF02/20140507/102194/HHRG-113-IF02-Wstate-PrattM-20140507.pdf
Bottom line:
The House GOP report was too early, ignored deadline issues, and turned out to be problematic as a result. But based on insurer testimony, the administration’s much-touted total of 8 million sign-ups is likely to be reduced by a million or more when converted into paid enrollments. In other words, the administration’s figures were too rosy by quite a bit—just not as much as House Republicans suggested.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/07/insurers-testify-that-10-20-percent-of-o
