Skip to content

Obamacare News of the Day

Washington Examiner: Health insurance premiums up 39% to 56% under Obamacare, reach $2,604 a month in California

  • According to a cost report from eHealthInsurance, a nationwide online private insurance exchange, families are paying an average of $663 a month and singles $274 a month, far more than before Obamacare kicked in. What's more, to save money, most buyers are choosing the lowest level of coverage, the so-called "bronze" plans.
  • "Premiums are increasing primarily because of the new required provisions for 2014 Affordable Care Act compliant plans, including guaranteed issue, essential health benefits, modified community rating and minimum actuarial values," said Brian Mast, spokesman for eHealthInsurance. "It is also likely that health insurance companies expected additional risk in the risk pool, because people with pre-existing conditions could no longer be denied coverage, and may have priced their plans higher to accommodate for this risk," said Mast.
  • [RELATED] United Liberty: Obamacare premium increases eclipse previous eight years combined

The Hill: O-Care premiums to skyrocket

  • Health industry officials say ObamaCare-related premiums will double in some parts of the country, countering claims recently made by the administration.The expected rate hikes will be announced in the coming months amid an intense election year, when control of the Senate is up for grabs.
  • “The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act,” the secretary said in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee. Her comment baffled insurance officials, who said it runs counter to the industry’s consensus about next year. “It’s pretty shortsighted because I think everybody knows that the way the exchange has rolled out … is going to lead to higher costs,” said one senior insurance executive who requested anonymity. The insurance official, who hails from a populous swing state, said his company expects to triple its rates next year on the ObamaCare exchange.
  • [RELATED] Bloomberg View: Young Invincibles Are Killing Obamacare
    • ...let’s start with some basic numbers. As of March 1, 4,242,325 people had selected a plan on one of the exchanges; 1,075,990 of them, or just a smidge over 25 percent, were young adults ages 18 to 35 – that critical demographic that the exchanges need to enroll. Previous projections had been for 40 percent… But to get some perspective, it’s not even mathematically possible for youth signups to get to 40 percent of total signups unless we get at least 912,174 more people to sign up in March – and then, it’s only possible if every single one of those people, including covered family members, is between the ages of 18 to 35. This is, if course, not likely…
    • How much does this matter? Well, a team from the Kaiser Family Foundation calculated that if enrollment were only 33 percent young, costs would exceed premiums by about 1.1 percent; if it were 25 percent (i.e. if it doesn’t change much), costs would exceed premiums by about 2.4 percent… But what if what we’re witnessing is the broad operation of adverse selection – older and sicker people buying while the young and healthy stay away? The first place that would show up in the data would be... a disproportionately low number of young people, particularly young men. Which is exactly what we do see.

The Hill: Obama to Hispanics: We won't deport relatives because you enroll in Obamacare

  • In an interview with Univision Deportes, a Spanish-language sports radio show, Obama said immigration officials won’t have access to the personal information that consumers provide when signing up for healthcare on the new exchanges.
  • “Well, the main thing for people to know is that any information you get, you know, asked with respect to buying insurance, does not have anything to do with … the rules governing immigration,” Obama said. “And you know, you can qualify if you’re a legal resident, if you are … legally present in the United States. “You know, if you have a family where some people are citizens or legally here, and others are not documented, the immigration people will never get that information.”
  • There are a host of other reasons that Hispanics have been slow to enroll — many are gaining coverage for the first time and worry the costs are prohibitive [you don't say!]

Commentary: March Madness? Fake ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers.

  • But before the president and his team start popping the champagne corks to celebrate their achievement and their faux hipness, it’s time once again to point out that the administration’s Potemkin enrollment figures should be read with a truckload of salt. As the New York Times reported last month, as much as 20 percent of all those enrolled had not actually paid their premiums, meaning they were not covered by the program. While Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told Congress she had no idea what the numbers of unpaid enrollees were, more states are reporting these figures and, as CNBC reported last week, the results are literally all over the map. While some states report high pay rates, others like Maryland say only 54 percent have paid.

Bloomberg Businessweek: Obamacare Shuffles Health Plan Market Share, Report Finds

  • A snapshot of Obamacare enrollment in seven states suggests the law hasn’t significantly increased competition in health insurance markets, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported.

National Review: Tinder Outreach: RI Tells Parents to Use Hook-Up App to Pester Kids to Enroll [simply put: creepy]

  • Young Rhode Islanders looking for a hook-up might end up in the unfortunate position of stumbling upon their mom. That’s the plan of attack from HealthSource RI, the state’s health-care exchange, for getting young people to enroll in health insurance on the exchange.
  • The exchange is providing parents with a “Nag Toolkit” to push their kids to enroll before the March 31 deadline by confronting them on various social-media apps. “Your kids don’t want to get health insurance,” the kit says. “They also don’t want to get nagged. Let’s find out which one they want less.”

Vermont Watchdog.org: Democratic lawmaker says Vermont's single-payer health care plan has already flatlined

  • In 2011, while the rest of America argued the merits of the president’s Affordable Care Act, Vermont jumped the progressive curve, promising to launch the nation’s first health single-payer system, in which state government pays providers to care for all residents. Now, even Democrats say that plan, called Green Mountain Care, isn’t ready for its proposed 2017 rollout, and Rep. Jim Condon told Vermont Watchdog it’s time for Gov. Peter Shumlin to shelve the ambitious plan immediately.
  • As Vermont Watchdog reported, an independent report by the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Avalere Health concluded that the costs of Green Mountain Care would require Vermont to raise tax revenue roughly equal to the state’s tax collections from all sources today.
  • [RELATED] Pioneer Institute: ACA Spiking Premiums in Massachusetts, More than 300 Cancellations of Plans

Previous
Next