Obamacare roundup: Great enrollments for Wellpoint; “Bette from Spokane” debunked
Via Joan McCarter, we learn that Wellpoint, which runs a number of for-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance plans, reported on an investor’s conference call that it expects to add over one million new policyholders this year and that its enrollments are much better than expectations. Of 500,000 enrolled so far, fully 80% of them came to the company via the exchanges. Of that amount, 2/3 were eligible to receive subsidies for their insurance premiums.
Of course, for those of us who support single payer, giving money to private insurers is a mixed blessing. We’d be better off without them, but under our current political situation, this is the best we will be able to do for the uninsured for a while. As McCarter points out, stories like this mean that Obamacare is going to be unrepealable soon, if it isn’t already.
Meanwhile, if you could stomach listening to the first Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, you heard Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodger (R-WA) tell the plight of a woman she called “Bette in Spokane,” who supposedly had to pay “nearly $700 per month” more for her health insurance, after her insurance company canceled her old plan.
As with many other such stories, this one has collapsed under scrutiny. As the linked article shows, Bette Grenier had had a catastrophic plan canceled, and she only compared it to the price of a Gold-level policy her insurer suggested as a replacement. Not only were cheaper policies available, she told the paper she would not go on the state exchange to look for a policy, even though this would likely have saved her even more money compared to the one her insurance company offered. She told the paper she and her husband planned to go without insurance.
As Paul Krugman (who pointed me to the Spokane link) notes, there is a reason why catastrophic plans aren’t allowed: “If you’re allowed to have insurance that barely covers anything, that’s almost the same as not participating at all.” Which appears to be exactly what’s happening in this case.
Cross-posted from Middle Class Political Economist.
There are many good plans available to Bette in the Washington exchange in the $200-300 per month range. The people who trumpet these stories are liars, period. We’ll assume the Congresswoman was merely reading words written by someone else. That speechwriter is a liar. These liars are damaging real people. They do not deserve civility.
When people stop to think about the effects of MLR on the cost of health insurance, maybe we can then move on to the important things wrong with the system and stop this inane babbling about the ACA and its effects.
The real argument that should be made by people attacking the ACA is:
1) I don’t like the idea of finding myself in a higher risk pool
2) I don’t like the idea of someone else telling me what health insurance must cover.
Those are valid points even from the point of view of someone who thinks the ACA is a good step forward despite its obvious limitations.
The seemingly endless anecdotes of rate shock(real and imagined, just peruse Naked Capitalism’s “real” stories about such, or their “skits”) never adequately address those two real reasons for such results. They refuse to understand that their previous “smokin” policies were just as controlled by MLR as are the new ACA mandated policies they find so offensive. Difference in price is solely due to those two points.
Their real problems lie in riskier people being covered(though you hear a lot of talk about single payer or Medicare for all, which is more than a little amusing when you do the math and figure out that such thought would further raise the risk in the pools) or they only want health insurance to cover their personal needs at this particular moment in time.
Perhaps if we dealt with those two issues and ignored price, we could then deal with the reasons why the 80 or 85% of insurance costs are so high. Y’know. The real problem.
EMichael, thanks for the comment. I am not sure why the high cost of health care in the U.S. is any more real a problem than the scandalously high number of uninsured here.
Also, are you saying that the reason people’s catastrophic policies were being canceled is that they couldn’t come anywhere near meeting the medical loss ratio rules?
Ken/EMichael:
The reasons for cancellation of the lesser cost policies are:
1. The insurance companies made a change in the policy which no longer made them grandfathered under the PPACA.
2. The insurance companies canceled them for whatever reasons unrelated to the PPACA as they were grandfathered.
Polices not meeting the PPACA requirements did not have to be canceled if they were in place pre-PPACA for the individual market. The hoopla about cancellation is just politics and also from those who have an issue with Obama (who I wish would show some balls once and awhile). The MLR has little (if anything) to do with the cancellations.
There are many reasons for rate shock besides just the PPACA and I wrote about one of them recently. http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2013/12/why-will-healthcare-insurance-be-cheaper-in-florida-with-the-ppaca.html “Why Will Healthcare Insurance Be Cheaper in Florida with the PPACA.” The state of Florida legislature deliberately took action to deny the state Insurance Regulatory Agency the ability to regulate insurance premiums. One would think people would be angry with the companies; but instead, they blame the PPACA. It is humorous in a way as EMichael points out one blogger makes a big deal over the cost increase without bring to light the true reasons for it.
Lets explain this a bit better. Many people had lower cost insurance because the pool of insurance specifically excluded others with prior conditions (such as myself with a triple bypass [weird for a runner and former weight lifter of average weight]). People could not get healthcare insurance because they were denied the right to obtain it due to the extremely high cost ($thousands per month) or just simply blocked. This was the hidden growing few in numbers who were left outside of the teepee to just simply “die.”
The PPACA is not the best; but, it does make healthcare insurance more readily accessible to all who are eligible in the individual market and require Medicaid. While Medicaid can attach personal assets (as determined by the states) it is a viable alternative for those with no money. As many forget Medicaid is also the doorway into nursing homes for the middle class and has the same restrictions concerning income.
Is it the risk or is it the cost of healthcare we are talking about here?
KT/Run,
I know that under the ACA 80% of the premiums will go to health providers due to the MLR rules. If my premiums go up with a policy change, it is due to being a a riskier pool and/or a policy that provides more coverage. That is just math.
If people want to complain about these increases, those complaints should be leveled at those two things(or Run’s description of the Florida fiasco). You cannot say you are in favor of universal coverage(let alone complain about the ACA not doing that) unless you accept that such actions will raise premiums.