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Tag: health care enrollments
Report: ‘Less Than 1 Percent’ Of Massachusetts Residents Are Now Uninsured

Report: ‘Less Than 1 Percent’ Of Massachusetts Residents Are Now Uninsured

As a number of Republican leaders across the nation continue to demonstrate their opposition to the Affordable Care Act by refusing to expand Medicaid in their states, one state in particular has seen tremendous progress by fully buying into the health care law.

A new report from Massachusetts’ Center for Health Information and Analysis reveals that between December 2013 and March 2014, “as key provisions” of Obamacare were implemented, the state-run Commonwealth Care’s public programs — first established under the state’s 2006 health care reform commonly known as “Romneycare” — and the “largest commercial payers” gained over 250,000 new members. As WBUR’s CommonHealth blog points out, “If that number holds, the percentage of Massachusetts residents who do not have coverage has dropped to less than 1 percent.”

The increased enrollments — reported just a month after a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that Romneycare was linked to decreased rates in mortality in the state — may be partially attributed to the Obama administration’s national campaign in the weeks following the ACA’s launch. Although much of the attention that Obamacare received in those weeks was negative, the reform nonetheless dominated politics and called Americans’ attention to health care, likely resulting in new enrollments in Massachusetts’ health insurance market.

Additionally, as CommonHealth notes, under Obamacare, a greater number of Massachusetts residents are newly eligible for free or subsidized coverage. Others — primarily low-income residents unable to pay the premiums under their employers’ plans, but prohibited from enrolling in state-subsidized insurance because their employers provided access to private health insurance — were now able to enroll in the state’s public programs or receive subsidized insurance, because the ACA struck down the restriction that had previously not allowed them to do so.

As of the end of March 2014, a total of 5.75 million residents were enrolled in either Massachusetts’ commercial health care insurance programs or the public program. This number excludes residents enrolled in Medicare or other federal programs, which means that the total number of insured residents is even higher.

Despite the good news, some in the state fear that the numbers will not hold up.

Lora Pellegrini, president of Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, tells CommonHealth that a majority of the new enrollees are not yet locked into a permanent plan, but rather a temporary coverage plan. This is because the state is still trying to figure out if these people qualify for free or subsidized care — an obstacle that first arose from the failure of Massachusetts’ Health Connector website, which is now being replaced by the federal HealthCare.gov site. When transitioning into a permanent plan, some of these new enrollees will learn that they do not qualify for free or even subsidized care. So how many will be willing to pay a premium without any help?

“The real challenge is going to be to move these folks from the temporary coverage into the permanent coverage where they belong, and then see if we’re able to retain these numbers,” Pellegrini says.

CHIA director Aron Boros agrees, and cautions that though the “numbers are a sign that we are moving in the right direction … there is still a lot of uncertainty about what they will ultimately mean to the total level of health insurance coverage” in the state.

Even so, the numbers are big news for Massachusetts and may just mark the first state in the U.S. able to boast a nearly zero percent rate of uninsured residents. Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow at Project Hope and former health care advisor to President George H.W. Bush, tells CommonHealth that if the “numbers are actually correct – that’s a big if – this is good.”

Screenshot via Massachusetts Health Connector

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Debunked: 5 GOP Obamacare Talking Points That Have Bitten The Dust

Debunked: 5 GOP Obamacare Talking Points That Have Bitten The Dust

Obama

The New York Times reported Wednesday that a large majority of people who signed up for Obamacare have paid their premiums on time. While these numbers vary based on the state and the type of plan, The Times says around 80 percent of those who signed up are paying, which is required for insurance coverage to start.

And, just like that, another Republican talking point about the Affordable Care Act has been debunked.

This idea that Obamacare beneficiaries would not pay their premiums, effectively dooming the young law, is in good company. A number of Republican talking points about Obamacare have bitten the dust recently. From the completely outlandish — death panels, government-funded abortions, etc. — to the notion that the Obama administration would never hit its enrollment target, they’ve ranged in viability, but have all nonetheless evaporated.

Here’s a look back at five anti-Obamacare talking points that have inevitably been disproved.

AFP Photo/Saul Loeb

No One Will Sign Up 

Ted Cruz Tea Party

The line was repeated ad nauseam by Republican detractors of the president. But — not surprisingly — saying it over and over didn’t make it come true.

There was the time House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said: “Above all, this report is a symbol of the failure of the president’s health care law… It is a rolling calamity that must be scrapped,” after the initial low enrollment numbers were released. Or when Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) tweeted: “106,185 people enrolled in Obamacare. 108,713 attended the 2010 NBA All-Star Game in Cowboys Stadium. .”

At the end of March, the White House released enrollment numbers that exceeded its initial goal of seven million. By the end of the first open enrollment period, signups were skyrocketing, eventually closing at above eight million.

Still, this hasn’t stopped some conservative pundits from questioning the success of the law. Charles Krauthammer, for example, now subscribes to the conspiracy theory that the numbers were fabricated by the administration.

“These guys go six months without any idea what the numbers are, and all of a sudden it’s to a decimal point,” Krauthammer actually said on television.

AFP Photo/Andrew Burton

A Lack Of Young People Will Cause A ‘Death Spiral’ 

This one had all the ingredients of a good GOP talking point: plausibility, an appeal to business thinkers, and a snappy catchphrase like “death spiral.” But these elements didn’t make it a reality.

Obamacare’s death spiral would occur, conservatives posited, because the number of old and sick people who signed up for coverage would not be offset by young, healthy people also signing up through the exchanges, causing premiums to rise and the entire program to spiral down the drain. But, thanks to the way the law was written, the so-called death spiral was never likely. And now it’s clear that health premiums are on pace to increase at the same rate as they were prior to the law being passed.

Furthermore, the final enrollment numbers show that 28 percent of those who enrolled via the federal exchange were between the ages of 18 and 34. While this number of “young invincibles” fell short of the administration’s initial target, it should be more than sufficient to prevent the law from collapsing.

Millions Will Lose Their Health Insurance

Henry Waxman

This talking point, which perhaps reached its pinnacle when Newsmaxreported that 100 million people could lose insurance under Obamacare, was largely disproved by a paper prepared for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The paper concluded that a grand total of 10,000 individuals, in just one state, would lose coverage and not have a viable option to replace their health care plan.

“The assertion that the law will cause five million individuals who currently have coverage in the individual market to go without coverage in 2014 is baseless,” the report read. “Of the reported 4.7 million people who receive cancellation notices, 2.35 million should have the option to renew their 2013 coverage. An additional 1.4 million should be eligible for tax credits through the marketplaces or Medicaid, which will provide them more comprehensive coverage at lower rates. Of the remaining individuals, only 10,000 individuals in 18 counties in a single state would be unable to access a catastrophic plan, and many of these individuals may sign up for coverage through their state exchange.”

Furthermore, under the new law, the uninsured rate in the United States has dropped, according to a recent Gallup poll. According to the poll, the April 2014 uninsured rate is down 1.6 percent from March and currently sits at 13.4 percent. That is also the lowest number Gallup has ever found since they began tracking the rate in 2008.

 Photo: Charlie Kaijo via Flickr


Death Panels 

This one, advanced by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, was certainly a whopper. So much so, in fact, that it was granted the title of “Lie of the Year” by PolitFact in 2009.

The death panel idea originated from a provision in the initial Affordable Care Act that would allow Medicare to pay for doctors and patients to discuss living wills and end-of-life treatment. To Palin, this was tantamount to the government holding a death panel to decide whether or not senior citizens are allowed to live.

Palin’s campaign, while ridiculous, did have important political ramifications: In 2011, the Obama administration deleted all references to “end-of-life” care from the provision in the bill.

Premium Prices Will Soar 

Health Care Premium

The final talking point is somewhat connected to the previously discussed “death spiral,” but deserves its own recognition. This one, offered again and again by Republican pundits like Sean Hannity, holds that insurance premiums for businesses and individuals will rise at an exponential rate because of the health care overhaul. Double-digit increases in health care premiums were expected by the right. It was going to be a disaster, they assured.

Well, disaster averted.

According to the USA Today, insurance rates are slated to rise by about 7 percent next year — similar to the rise expected without the Affordable Care Act.

“The double-rate increases we’ve been hearing are probably exaggerated,” Dave Axene, a fellow with the Society of Actuaries, toldUSA Today. “That’s not what we’re seeing from the actuarial organizations — I guess we’re being a little bit more optimistic.”  

Image via The Kaiser Family Foundation

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Health Care Enrollment Tops 5 Million

Health Care Enrollment Tops 5 Million

By Noam N. Levey, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – More than 5 million people have now signed up for health insurance on marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, thanks to a surge in enrollment over the past two weeks, the Obama administration announced Monday.

The quickening pace of enrollment confirms that many Americans are using the new marketplaces as a March 31 deadline approaches for getting coverage this year.

The latest figures indicate that roughly 1 million people enrolled in the past two weeks, surpassing the total for all of February.

If the pace continues, the Obama administration may come close to registering 6 million people in the first year that Americans are able to get guaranteed health coverage under the health-care law.

That would still fall short of the goal of 7 million that administration officials had hoped to reach before the botched rollout of the law last fall.

How many people have paid for the health insurance plans they have selected remains uncertain.

Administration officials have not released data on payments. Unofficial estimates from insurance companies and some state-run marketplaces suggest that as many as 20 percent of enrollees in some markets have yet to pay their premiums, although some of those may not yet have been billed.

Nonetheless, 6 million enrollments would be an important accomplishment for the law’s supporters, who feared that the marketplaces might collapse after the disastrous launch of the federal HealthCare.gov website in October.

Drawing on the experience of previous government health programs, the administration and many outside experts had long predicted a rush to sign up for coverage in the final few weeks. In particular, they predicted that some groups, including young people and Latinos, whose participation in the marketplaces so far has lagged behind others’, increasingly would sign up as the deadline approached. The administration did not release a demographic breakdown for the latest enrollments.

The state-based marketplaces enable Americans who do not get health-care coverage through work to select among plans that offer at least a basic set of benefits. The plans cannot turn away sick people.

People who make less than four times the federal poverty level, or about $94,000 for a family of four, qualify for government subsidies to offset the cost of their premiums.

AFP Photo/Karen Bleier