Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Whiner's and Deadbeats

The Unaffordable Care Act (UCA) is still being promoted as a success. Only a politician with a big ego would say the UCA is working and helping people obtain health care they would not otherwise get. 


If the UCA is so great, why are there so many whiners and deadbeats?
Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 43% of those buying ObamaCare plans say they are having difficulty paying premiums, with 14% finding it "very difficult."
Investors Business Daily

I can understand if these people were my clients who are paying the FULL UNSUBSIDIZED PREMIUM for their coverage, but 87% of those surveyed are receiving taxpayer premium and cost sharing subsidies.
Widely followed industry analyst Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said that "generally, carriers are saying that 85% paid the first month and that enrollment deteriorates after that at a rate of 2% to 3% per month."
That's a 15% fall off the first month in people who never paid their first premium. Six months later that is another 12 - 18% drop off.

I have been in the health insurance business almost 40 years and if I had those kind of results I would have bailed a long time ago. It's difficult enough to grow a successful business, but losing as much as half your business the first full year is an insane business model.
An additional problem with the official enrollment numbers turned up in a separate IG report, which found 2.9 million "inconsistencies" between what applicants said and what government data show about income, citizenship and the like in the first five months of open enrollment.
Roughly 40% of applications submitted via hc.flub have inconsistencies and 60% of those may never have been eligible for coverage.

I wonder how many of those "inconsistent" applications originated with navigators?

Recapping, of the reported 8 million that signed up:

  • 1.2 million never paid their first premium
  • Another 1.9 million will drop off during the first year due to non-payment of premium
  • And 1.6 million may be disqualified because they were never eligible for coverage
Whiners and deadbeats are wrecking Obama's grand scheme.

We spent almost $1 billion on a website that still isn't working and who knows how much money for navigators and other paid enrollers and only insured a net enrollment of 3.3 million people.

This is how Washington politicians define success.

Pitiful.
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