For the third time since the passage of the hotly contested Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known to both its supporters and
opposition as ObamaCare, the healthcare Marketplace will open for enrollment at
midnight tonight.
So what can we expect from this round of open enrollment now that we have two years of federally mandated healthcare insurance reform experience tucked neatly under our belts? For the sake of preserving the law along with the dignity of those Democrats and the President who forced ObamaCare on the nation, hopefully we will get much more than the law has yielded from the previous two open enrollment periods.
Where Do We Stand Going In to the 2016 Open Enrollment Period?
In a news brief issued by HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell in mid-October, she painted a less than rosy picture of the forthcoming open enrollment period.
With just over 11.6 million people having initially enrolled one the healthcare Marketplace (formerly known as the healthcare exchanges) during the 2015 open enrollment period, Burwell projects that only 9.1 million of those will still be insured at the end of the year (effectuated enrollment).
As for the pool of 28 million uninsured who were eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace when it was first launched in October of 2013, using information provided in two separate reports recently released by HHS, it appears that it has been reduced by fewer the 1.9 million. This is significantly less than the 10 million the uninsured pool was projected to have been reduced by in 2015, when the law was first past.
HSS Enrollment Projections for 2016
As previously stated, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell does not paint a very optimistic picture of healthcare Marketplace enrollment for the coming year.
Of the 9.1 million projects to still have the healthcare insurance plan they obtained through the healthcare Marketplace in 2015, Burwell projects that only 7.3 to 8.8 of those will re-enroll this coming open enrollment period. Burwell does however expect overall healthcare Marketplace enrollment to increase to between 11 to 14.1 million at the sound of the closing bell on January 31st. In the end, Burwell stated that the 2016 effectuated enrollment is expected to be between 9.4 to 11.4 million.
On the low side, the projected effectuated enrollment for 2016 is a gain only .3 million over 2015 and on the high side the gain is 2.3 million.
Speaking just of the uninsured, Burwell projects that from the pool of 28 million uninsured who were eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace at the onset, between 2.8 and 3.9 million will gain coverage through the healthcare Marketplace this enrollment period.
What Can We Really Expect for 2016
So what can we expect from this round of open enrollment now that we have two years of federally mandated healthcare insurance reform experience tucked neatly under our belts? For the sake of preserving the law along with the dignity of those Democrats and the President who forced ObamaCare on the nation, hopefully we will get much more than the law has yielded from the previous two open enrollment periods.
Where Do We Stand Going In to the 2016 Open Enrollment Period?
In a news brief issued by HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell in mid-October, she painted a less than rosy picture of the forthcoming open enrollment period.
With just over 11.6 million people having initially enrolled one the healthcare Marketplace (formerly known as the healthcare exchanges) during the 2015 open enrollment period, Burwell projects that only 9.1 million of those will still be insured at the end of the year (effectuated enrollment).
As for the pool of 28 million uninsured who were eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace when it was first launched in October of 2013, using information provided in two separate reports recently released by HHS, it appears that it has been reduced by fewer the 1.9 million. This is significantly less than the 10 million the uninsured pool was projected to have been reduced by in 2015, when the law was first past.
HSS Enrollment Projections for 2016
As previously stated, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell does not paint a very optimistic picture of healthcare Marketplace enrollment for the coming year.
Of the 9.1 million projects to still have the healthcare insurance plan they obtained through the healthcare Marketplace in 2015, Burwell projects that only 7.3 to 8.8 of those will re-enroll this coming open enrollment period. Burwell does however expect overall healthcare Marketplace enrollment to increase to between 11 to 14.1 million at the sound of the closing bell on January 31st. In the end, Burwell stated that the 2016 effectuated enrollment is expected to be between 9.4 to 11.4 million.
On the low side, the projected effectuated enrollment for 2016 is a gain only .3 million over 2015 and on the high side the gain is 2.3 million.
Speaking just of the uninsured, Burwell projects that from the pool of 28 million uninsured who were eligible to participate on the healthcare Marketplace at the onset, between 2.8 and 3.9 million will gain coverage through the healthcare Marketplace this enrollment period.
What Can We Really Expect for 2016
First, what we can expect is that in 2016 there will be a greater loss of the 2015 participants than Burwell has expressed in her news brief, at least if you wish to believe her projection that between 2.8 and 3.9 million uninsured will gain coverage in 2016. Let’s take a look.
If you reduce the 2016 projected effectuated enrollment of be between 9.4 to 11.4 million by both the high and low figure of uninsured Burwell projects will participated on the healthcare exchanges this open enrollment period, worst and best case re-enrollment figures are 5.5 and 8.6 million. In contrast Burwell reports re-enrollment to be between 7.3 and 8.8 million, numbers I have yet to figure out how she arrived at.
Regardless, the simple math says that if we want to believe Burwell’s optimistic predictions of uninsured enrollment, as few as .5 million and as many as 3.6 million 2015 participants on the healthcare Marketplace cannot re-enroll in 2016 for the numbers to work.
However, re-enrollment may not actually be as bad as stated here as it is based on a very optimistic, some would even say (including myself) fantasy like, enrollment predictions of the uninsured.
I have no clue as to the how HHS derived their uninsured enrollment projections, I am sure that they have a really cool model some number cruncher built for them (the name Gruber comes to mind) and the number of considerations that must be taken in to account to derive this figure is far beyond my very limited expertise. But one thing is for certain, for whatever reasons, HHS and the Obama Administration has to as yet ever project new enrollment correct.
Had their past projections been on target, there would be roughly 10 million fewer uninsured in that starting pool of 28 million and we would be looking at reducing the uninsured pool by another 6 million this coming open enrollment period. But when you consider that fewer than 1.9 million of the oldest and least healthy of the uninsured have so far enrolled through the healthcare Marketplace over the 9 months of the first two open enrollment periods, the likelihood of nearly doubling that figure over the next 3 months is about as likely as Republican’s dropping their push to repeal the law.
In the Mean Time, Premiums Are Expected to Rise Considerably
While consumers in a few states and regions will see a reduction in healthcare insurance premiums, the majority of healthcare Marketplace shoppers are once again going experience rate hikes, substantial rate hikes in far too many cases.
The Obama Administration has been pretty quiet on the matter, they have basically used up all their excuses. What they have suggested however, is that consumers shop around for an affordable plan. This is much the same advice President Obama gave us last year when rates on the most popular bottom tier Silver plans were hit the hardest. Essentially what the administration is suggestion is that we need to ignore what a plan might have to offer us and instead we just look for a price tag we can afford. This is what healthcare insurance has become on the individual marketplace I guess.
Despite what the Obama’s talking heads tell us, this will be the third year straight of rate hikes more substantial than the individual marketplace would have experience prior to the passage of ObamaCare. The administration likes to mislead the American people by making the comparison to the individual marketplace rate increases the two years leading up to the opening of the healthcare Marketplace while failing to disclose that the individual marketplace suffered the highest rate increases in history over that two year period solely due to insurers having to cover all the new mandates that went in to effect just months after ObamaCare was signed in to law. No person on the individual marketplace between 2010 and 2013 was exempt, each and every one saw their premiums increase from 40% on up to 100% and in some cases even more.
Roughly 85% of those individuals who are purchasing healthcare plans through the healthcare Marketplace are receiving taxpayer funded subsidies to offset the high cost of their new found insurance plans. At the same time, better than 85% of those who are participating on the healthcare Marketplace are doing so after transfers from the private marketplace. It is an easy connection to make that the majority of those who are now receiving subsidies once were willing and able to pay for their own healthcare insurance in full and without the need or desire for government assistance. Again, this is what healthcare insurance has become on the individual marketplace.
Bigger Penalties are Coming
Whether or not you can afford to purchase healthcare insurance on or off the healthcare Marketplace is irrelevant, if you do not have a qualified healthcare plan in 2016 expect big penalties coming your way.
If you do not have health insurance in 2016, here is what the Federal Government demands that you pay:
·
2.5% of your yearly household income (Only the amount of income above the tax
filing threshold, about $10,150 for an individual in 2014, is used to calculate
the penalty.) The maximum penalty is the national average premium for a Bronze
plan.
OR
·
$695 per person ($347.50 per child under 18) The maximum penalty per family using this
method is $2,085.
So it all starts again at midnight tonight. I don’t suspect that there will be much media coverage nor will Secretary Burwell or the President be reaching out to give us any enrollment updates. They have already done their best to play down enrollment and continue to pass off the Medicaid Expansion enrollment as the measurement of success of the individual mandate.
Time will tell but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on things getting pretty contentious once the final 2016 enrollment number are in.
We must not forget that this $2.4 million “almost” Universal Healthcare plan by its own best projections would fail to ensure no less than 30 million Americans and as it turns out that number is likely to rise to 50 million. Again, if I were a betting man, I would put my money on Republican’s making this a major issue for whoever wins the Democratic nomination and force them to not just defend this incomprehensible mess they have made of our healthcare insurance system but explain to the American people just exactly why they should continue to support this madness that remains as unpopular today with the majority as it did the day it was signed in to law.
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