Thread: Health law: 8 million chose new plan under law

Health law: 8 million chose new plan under law

Health overhaul: 8 million Americans chose health plan on new markets, but Hispanics lag

By Carla k. Johnson, AP Medical Writer19 hours ago

Blue or red, a majority of states have exceeded their health care sign-up targets under President Barack Obama's law — something that would have been hard to imagine after last fall's botched rollout of insurance markets.

But the administration's final numbers, released Thursday, also expose shortcomings, including subpar enrollment among Hispanics, the nation's largest minority group and also its least insured.

Still, strong state-by-state performance indicates that the health care law is making inroads around the country, even as Republicans insist repealing "Obamacare" will be a winning issue in the fall congressional elections. An Associated Press analysis of the government numbers found that 31 states met or exceeded enrollment targets set by the administration before the insurance exchanges opened. Twenty of those are led by Republican governors, many of whom were hostile to the program.

The Health and Human Services Department said 8 million Americans chose a health plan through the new insurance markets in the first year of the historic health care overhaul. Some 4.8 million more gained coverage through Medicaid and children's insurance programs. A surge in enrollments since March 1 doubled sign-ups in some states, including Texas, Georgia and Florida.

"There is reason to be optimistic about what the law can deliver, both in terms of coverage and affordable insurance options" said Andy Hyman of the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "In time, it will become part of the bloodstream of our health care system." Hyman is a senior program officer working to expand coverage.

With Republicans vowing to make the failures of the law a main theme of their midterm election push, the Obama administration will need to convince the public that it has been a success. A recent administration announcement of the 8 million sign-ups failed to move public opinion much, with negative views of the law more common than positive ones. But polls also have found that Americans don't want the law repealed, preferring that Congress work to improve it instead.

Younger and healthier than the U.S. population as a whole, Hispanics had been viewed as crucial to the success of Obama's coverage expansion. But the final count was disappointing. Hispanics account for 14.5 percent of those eligible for coverage on the new health insurance markets, but they represented 10.7 percent of the actual enrollees who also volunteered their race or ethnicity, the government reported.

Many Hispanics tried to get coverage but hit roadblocks, said Jane Delgado, president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, a nonpartisan advocacy network. The reasons are numerous: A Spanish version of the federal health care website was delayed and there was a shortage of in-person guides reaching out to Latinos.

For some mixed-status families, a fear of immigration authorities may have discouraged enrollment. Immigrants who are in the United States illegally cannot participate in the new health insurance system, but many have eligible relatives who are citizens or legal residents.

"This is only the first step in a long race," Delgado said. "Many people who are uninsured don't understand the language of insurance. Big media campaigns aren't as effective for actual enrollment as the one-on-one approach."

The new report didn't include information on how many of the newly enrolled have actually paid their insurance premiums. With grace periods for enrolling extending into mid-April, many who have signed up weren't obligated to pay until this week. A report released Wednesday by House Republicans said 67 percent of people who had signed up through federal marketplaces had paid their first month's premiums as of April 15, far lower than payment rates reported by some individual insurers, which were more in the range of 85 percent or above.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday it was no surprise that GOP lawmakers who have voted to repeal the law would put out a downbeat report about the law's progress. He said official figures on paid premiums would come out when the complete data that is currently being compiled is ready. "I'm confident it's not going to be 67 percent. I don't know what it's going to be," Carney said.

Even though the administration is claiming huge successes, the Congressional Budget Office projects more than 40 million people will still be uninsured this year, and a more complete picture of who's still uninsured won't emerge until next year with the first results from large national surveys.

"Beyond a doubt, the number of uninsured Americans has fallen by millions. Whether it's 5 million or 15 million still isn't clear," said Larry Levitt, an expert on health insurance markets at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "The low enrollment among Latinos is an indication of where challenges still lie: the hard-to-reach groups where more outreach is probably needed."

Many of the underperforming states were those that had built their own online marketplaces. Massachusetts, which had served as a model for the Obama program, only signed up 31,695 people, far short of the goal of 250,000. Oregon, which met only 29 percent of its goal, recently decided to scrap its online marketplace and go with the federal portal.

Other highlights of the report:
—Young adults aged 18 to 34, whose premiums are needed to balance the cost of older, sicker enrollees, made up about 28 percent of the total 8 million. Independent analysts have said the mix should be 40 percent young adults. But the administration called the mix sufficient to keep premiums stable.
—More women than men signed up through the exchanges: 54 percent vs. 46 percent.
—It's still not clear how many people who purchased coverage on the new markets already had insurance. The report said of the 5.18 million who applied for financial assistance and selected a plan on the exchanges run by the federal government, 13 percent said they already had coverage.
—Blacks and Asians signed up at higher-than-expected rates. Blacks make up 13.3 percent of those eligible for marketplace coverage, but represented 16.7 percent of those who chose a health plan and disclosed their race. Asians make up 3.3 percent of the eligible pool, but were 7.9 percent of enrollees who volunteered racial information.
—Nearly a third of people who chose a health plan on the federal exchanges didn't report their race or ethnicity, or chose "Other."
The next enrollment period for private health insurance coverage for 2015 under the health law is scheduled to run Nov. 15 through Feb. 15.
"They've had some success," Levitt said, "but they're going to have to do it all over again next year and get more people signed up to succeed."

http://news.yahoo.com/health-law-8-m...181741193.html

The GOP’s Obamacare illusion is getting harder to maintain

Greg Sargent
Health-care signups have spiked, hurting the party’s 2014 strategy...

Are people paying their Obamacare premiums? Yes and no

The White House rejects a GOP report saying only two-thirds of the 8 million enrollees have paid their Obamacare premiums. Final numbers are not in, but administration officials point to insurer estimates that 80 to 90 percent have paid.

By Linda Feldmann 23 hours ago

The Obama administration acknowledges that not everyone who enrolled in health coverage via government-run exchanges has paid his or her first premium. Thus, not all 8 million enrollees, in fact, have health insurance.

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• Data released on Wash. health exchange enrolleesAssociated Press

But on Thursday, the White House threw cold water on an assertion made the day before by leaders of a Republican-led House committee that only two-thirds of enrollees had paid their premiums by April 15.

“Let’s begin with the fact that the committee says they looked at who paid by April 15,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said, “but as you know ... there was a tremendous surge in enrollments at the end of the process.”

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That included people who were in line at midnight on March 31 and were able to complete their enrollments by April 15, he said. “So a lot of those folks haven't even gotten notices yet or bills yet to pay their premiums.”

Mr. Carney also referenced recent public comments by insurance company executives, “most of [whom] have indicated that they're seeing 80 to 90 percent of their enrollees pay their premiums.”

In a report released Thursday on health insurance enrollment via the exchanges through April 19, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it did not have comprehensive data on paid enrollment. But the report repeated the 80 to 90 percent figure, sourcing it to public statements by insurers. An HHS spokeswoman said she didn’t anticipate having that information until later this year.

In early April, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association estimated that 80 to 85 percent of people who had selected one of its plans through the marketplace had made their first payment, based on policies that took effect on Feb. 1 or earlier. On Wednesday, the insurer WellPoint said about 90 percent of its sign-ups had paid.

Republican leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which released the report Wednesday saying only 67 percent of enrollees had paid, said they got their data from 160 health insurers selling policies on the federal exchange. At the White House briefing Thursday, Carney said there are more than 300 insurance companies.

“So what you have here is partial information packaged in a way to try to undermine what must be a depressing reality to those who want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which is that millions of Americans enrolled, exceeding even our most optimistic projections,” Carney said.

In its report Thursday, HHS for the first time released demographic data about enrollees:
• 54 percent are female and 46 percent are male.
• 34 percent are under age 35, and 28 percent are between the ages of 18 and 34.
• 65 percent selected a “silver” plan, which offers the second-lowest premiums, and 20 percent chose “bronze,” which has the lowest premiums but the highest deductibles.
• 85 percent received a federal subsidy to buy insurance.

The federal marketplace application contained optional questions about race and ethnicity, and 69 percent of applicants answered. HHS also released that data Thursday. Of those who responded, 63 percent were white, 17 percent were African-American, 11 percent were Latino, 8 percent were Asian, 1 percent were multiracial, 0.3 percent were American Indian/Alaska native, and 0.1 percent were native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.

Latino enrollment was “slightly lower” than the qualified population, an HHS official acknowledged. Latinos make up 17 percent of the US population.
“There is more work to do,” said Mayra Alvarez, associate director for the Office of Minority Health at HHS.

The department also offered assurances that each state is on track to have a “stable risk pool” in its individual health insurance market.

“All of the projections that we’re familiar with, our own and others, suggest that the pool of individuals across the states who have picked a plan and enrolled is sufficient to produce a stable risk pool around which premiums and products will be priced,” said Michael Hash, director of the Office of Health Reform at HHS.

That was true in every state, Mr. Hash added. Health market analysts have been speculating over the price of health insurance premiums when the next open enrollment period begins on Nov. 15.

In more than 12 states – including some of the nation’s largest – enrollment at least doubled since March 1, HHS reported. In Texas, enrollment went up 149 percent; in Georgia, 127 percent; and in Florida, 123 percent.

http://news.yahoo.com/people-paying-...221700632.html