Unfavorable Views Of Health Law Spike In July: Poll

By Jordan Rau

Fri, Aug 1 2014

The health law’s unpopularity among the public rose sharply in July with a surge of disapproval from people who had been agnostic about it in recent months, a poll released Friday shows. The law is as unpopular as it has been since it was enacted four years ago.

The poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 53 percent of the public had an unfavorable view of the law in July, the highest level since the law was passed in 2010. It was up from 45 percent in June. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)  The law’s unpopularity hit similar levels several times since passing, most recently in January when 50 percent of people disliked it.

Support for the law in July remained about the same as in June, with 37 percent supporting it. The change came from the number of people who had previously told pollsters they did not know or refused to discuss their opinions: while 16 percent fell into that group in June, only 11 percent did in July.

The poll did not provide any definitive answers for the change but noted that people reported that their informal chatter with friends and family was more than four times as likely to be negative as supportive toward the law.

Public opinion was evenly divided on the Supreme Court’s decision that closely held companies such as the Hobby Lobby craft stores could refuse to provide workers with birth control through their insurance because it violated the religious beliefs of the company. Women and men also saw things pretty much the same. Seven of 10 Republicans hailed the decision, and Democrats disliked it just as strongly. The public was split about whether the decision will make it harder for women to get prescription birth control. Few people said the court’s action would make them more likely to vote in the fall mid-term elections.

Nearly six in 10 people believe that the decision may lead to employers using religious justifications to attempt to deny coverage for other health services, such as vaccinations or blood transfusions. Three-quarters of Democrats believed this is likely while 59 percent of Republicans do not. Just one in eight people think the court’s decision is a major setback for the health law. However, a third of the public did not know the decision was related to the health law.

The poll noted, as prior foundation polls have, that much of the public does not know how big parts of the law work. Fewer than four in 10 people were aware that people getting insurance through the law had a choice among private plans, even though most areas of the country have multiple insurers offering competing policies. A quarter of people thought there was a single government plan.

The poll was conducted from July 15 through July 21 among 1,507 adults. The margin of error was +/- 3 percentage points.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

source : Unfavorable Views Of Health Law Spike In July: Poll

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Good News On California ACA Rates. But Why?

By Lisa Aliferis, KQED

Thu, Jul 31 2014

After years of double-digit rate hikes in health insurance premiums, California will see average increases of 4.2 percent in 2015 for people who purchase insurance through the Covered California exchange, the state's Obamacare marketplace.

It’s good news for consumers, but two of the top insurance officials in the state disagree about why it’s happening.

Covered California's executive director and other analysts pointed to specific factors for this moderate increase. For starters, enrollment was very strong in 2014, more than a million people. In addition, healthy people signed up, spreading the risk.

But the state's insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, sees a different force in play. He believes that a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 45, has insurers scared.

"Health insurers have hit the pause button" on rate hikes, Jones said Thursday, just hours after Covered California announced its 2015 rates.

Proposition 45, which voters will consider in November, would give his office the authority to reject excessive rate hikes. Jones believes insurers held their fire on 2015 premium increases so as not to create a backlash from consumers and enable the passage of Prop. 45.

“There’s no guarantee insurers will continue to” keep rate increases low without Prop. 45, Jones said. “That’s authority we still need.”

Peter Lee dismissed the idea that 2015 premiums are artificially low, saying that he had been involved in “deep actuarial reviews” with insurers and said that “the last thing we want is rebound rate hikes” in future years.

As part of the rate review process, regulators at the Department of Managed Health Care and Jones’ Department of Insurance will review rates in the coming weeks to ensure they are neither too high, nor too low, Lee said. If premiums were set too low, an insurer might not have sufficient resources to cover the health care costs of its customers.

Jones confirmed that his staff would look at this issue, but said he “can’t imagine that these rates are inadequate.”

When rates were introduced in May 2013 for Covered California’s opening year many experts said they were surprisingly low and thought those low rates might be a “loss leader” strategy, said UCLA health policy professor Jerry Kominski. There was a concern that rates were low to get people into the market and then “jack up prices” later, he said.

“That didn’t happen,” Kominski said. He doesn't think it's happening now, either. “I don’t think the insurers are lying in wait, waiting to spring enormous increases on the public next year.”

Earlier this week, Jones released an analysis done by his staff, looking at 2014 vs. 2013 individual plan rates and found average increases of 22 to 88 percent for people who bought non-subsidized policies.

But those 2013 pre-ACA plans existed in a fundamentally different insurance market, Kominski argued. “In 2013, premiums were artificially lower, and prior to the ACA, premiums could be held down by excluding high-risk patients from the market and by offering skinny benefits.”

Covered California was created as an "active purchaser" and negotiates directly with insurers. Some officials have raised concerns that if Proposition 45 passes, its additional layer of rate review might create delays in approving plans for the exchange.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

source : Good News On California ACA Rates. But Why?

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Florida's Largest Health Insurer Is Raising Exchange Rates An Average Of 17.6 Percent

By Phil Galewitz

Thu, Jul 31 2014

Florida Blue, the state’s largest health insurer, is increasing premiums by an average of 17.6 percent for its Affordable Care Act exchange plans next year, company officials say.

The nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliate blames higher health costs as a result of attracting older adults this year who previously lacked coverage and are using more services than expected.

Florida insurance regulators plan to release rate information for all companies next week. The exchange plans cover individuals who aren’t covered by employer-based policies.

Florida Blue offers many plans. The 40 percent of its individual policyholders who chose “narrow network” plans called BlueSelect that limit coverage to fewer doctors and hospitals will see rates rise by an average of 13 percent.

Critics of the health law have predicted big rate hikes in the second year of the online marketplaces. Florida Blue CEO Patrick Geraghty noted that premiums in the individual market have been going up for years. “In the individual market, this type of average rate increase is typical,” he told Kaiser Health News. “It’s is not aberrant.”

Next year will mark the fourth consecutive year Florida Blue has increased premiums by at least 11 percent on average for people under 65 who buy coverage on their own. Florida Blue increased rates an average of 16.5 percent in 2014, 16 percent in 2013 and 11.5 percent in 2012, the company said.

Florida Blue signed up 339,000 customers through the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace this year— about 34 percent of the nearly 1 million who enrolled in the state, the company said.  Florida does not operate its own exchange.

Nationally, 2015 rates that have been made public have varied sharply, with some insurers increasing rates, some reducing them and others keeping them stable.

Avalere, a consulting firm, found in June that average premiums for a 40-year-old, non-smoker would increase by about 8 percent next year, based on an analysis of “silver” plan rates in nine states. Changes ranged from a 1.4 percent average decrease in Oregon to a 16 percent average increase in Indiana.  

California officials said Thursday that more than 1.2 million consumers in the state-run insurance exchange can expect modest price increases of 4.2 percent on average next year. The Covered California marketplace is an “active purchaser” under the health law, which means it negotiated the rates with Anthem Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente and other major insurers. The rates are also subject to review by California regulators.

About a dozen carriers will be competing in the individual health insurance market next year in Florida. Two have disclosed their rates. Humana is increasing prices an average of 14.1 percent for its HMO, while its preferred provider organizations (PPO) plan will increase 2.2 percent on average. Molina has set an 11.6 percent average rate decrease for all its plans.

source : Florida's Largest Health Insurer Is Raising Exchange Rates An Average Of 17.6 Percent

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