<p>A longer enrollment period might help or hurt Aetna, depending on what you think would happen with healthy customers.</p>
<p>Suppose the longer enrollment induced healthy customers who wouldn’t have otherwise signed up to sign up: increased advertising, word of mouth, a fixed website (sigh), whatever. Then it would help Aetna.</p>
<p>On the other hand, suppose the longer enrollment induced healthy customers who were going to sign up anyway to sign up later, but didn’t bring in any new healthy customers. Then it would hurt Aetna.</p>
<p>Bclintonk, my only concern is that there will be some decent doctors willing to see patients with ACA-compliant plans on the individual market. Maybe I am a worrywart, but this seem like a legitimate concern to me.</p>
<p>So a lot of individual policies are being cancelled because they don’t meet the minimum requirements of the ACA for prescription drug coverage, mental health, etc. </p>
<p>The large employer mandate was postponed for another year, but is this a preview of what is coming down the pike for those employed by firms with more than 50 employees? If the policy does not comport with ACA, it will have to be and the rates will go up. </p>
<p>I read a few articles on this. It seems the employers can get around this by giving employees reimbursements to go out and buy on their own. And they can drop dependants from the group plan at which point the dependants have to go on the exchanges where they cannot get subsidies. </p>
<p>Anyone else have any insight on this?</p>
<p>Could it be that the employer mandate was postponed so that “only” 7 to 10 million people would lose their individual coverage and not many more who might lose employer coverage?</p>
<p>Equally confusing to me is the idea that having insurers cancel non-compliant policies somehow aids the ACA because it means more subscribers sign up for Obamacare.</p>
<p>People don’t sign up for Obamacare. People buy health insurance policies. Now, most people who had an insurance policy cancelled will buy another one. They’ve already shown that having health insurance is important to them. </p>
<p>But a person whose policy was cancelled is in one of two situations. Either she qualifies for a subsidy, or she does not. If she qualifies for a subsidy, unless she is an idiot she would have bought a policy on the exchanges whether her old policy was cancelled or not. If she doesn’t qualify for a subsidy, she probably won’t buy on the exchanges, and therefore won’t contribute to any exchange buyer number.</p>
<p>So as far as publicity goes, the Obama administration has not much to gain from people’s policies being cancelled, and quite a bit to lose.</p>
<p>If 10Million people get cancelled then 10M people create accounts on the web site and things are great because projections are exceeded. </p>
<p>If 10 million people who were cancelled sign up, it blurs the fact that we didnt get the young healthy types to sign up. Everyone knows that we needed to get to 7 million for it to be viable. </p>
<p>To me it seems like everything points to it being an advantage to to the administration drive as many people in as possible.</p>
<p><a href=“citing%20Reutrers”>quote=emilybeee</a> "Aetna said that it does not expect its individual business to grow in 2014 from 2013 but could after that.
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</p>
<p>Note that statement #2 is not the same as statement #1, and statement #1 is not a reasonable inference from statement #2. Statement #2 is just an acknowledgement by one insurer that its products in the individual insurance market will not produce revenue growth for 2014 from 2013 levels. There could be lots of reasons for this: it’s elected not to compete in many markets, or it expects its market share to shrink in a more competitive market, or it expects to add customers but have lower revenues per customer due to increased competition, or it knows its products are simply not competitive in the current market so it will be lucky to hold onto the customers it has and doesn’t expect to add new ones. One possible reason is that it doesn’t expect the overall market to grow (statement #1), but that’s a huge leap from what it actually said (statement #2).</p>
<p>No they don’t. Most of them buy insurance policies from insurance companies without going on the exchanges. The exchanges are for people who get subsidies, and if you’re due for a subsidy, you ought to go on the exchanges even if your existing policy wasn’t cancelled.</p>
<p>The people here whose insurance was cancelled mostly are not buying on the exchanges.</p>
<p>It occurred to me that the main reason all the ‘extras’ were put into the minimum requirements of the ACA was precisely to cancel all those individual policies. It was intentional in order to force people onto the exchanges. They needed those people in order to subsidize the other people.</p>
<p>"No they don’t. Most of them buy insurance policies from insurance companies without going on the exchanges. The exchanges are for people who get subsidies, and if you’re due for a subsidy, you ought to go on the exchanges even if your existing policy wasn’t cancelled.</p>
<p>The people here whose insurance was cancelled mostly are not buying on the exchanges."</p>
<p>Imo, I think a lot of people who are seeing their policies cancelled won’t go on the exchanges even if they would qualify for a subsidy because they suffer from ODS.</p>
<p>If you’re shopping for a policy, and you know you don’t qualify for a subsidy, you will have more choice (or at least as much) if you don’t go to the exchanges.</p>
<p>As I’ve explained, canceling people’s policies will not “force them onto the exchanges.” It will force them to buy new insurance policies, which insurance companies will happily sell them directly.</p>
<p>I knew what they meant by “signing up for Obamacare”. Obviously, they mean exchange plans and many of the ACA-compliant plans off the exchanges that mimic exchange plans.</p>
<p>Well, eventually exchange plans will be much cheaper than private plans and slowly but surely more people will be in the exchange. Small business is next. This system is too clunky not to be the beginning a of a bigger scheme.</p>
<p>Well, I certainly share that concern, but I think it’s going to happen. The survey of physician group practices I cited in post #2860 found that 29.2% of group practices had already decided to participate with “new health insurance products sold on an ACA exchange” and another 40.2% said they were “evaluating” it. Only 14.4% said they “will not be participating.” The rest (16.2%) “don’t know.” This was as of September, 2013. I expect a healthy slice of those on the fence–the 56.4% in the “evaluating” or “don’t know” categories–will come around to it. </p>
<p>These numbers are actually not too different from those reported in the NY Post story–23% said they “are taking patients who signed up through health exchanges” compared to 33% who are “not sure whether to do it” and 44% who “said they are not participating.” That 44% “not participating” doesn’t necessarily mean they have definitely decided not to participate, however; it could include a lot of “I don’t have enough information yet,” especially since 77% in the New York survey said they hadn’t yet seen a payment schedule. I wouldn’t agree to a contract for my services if I didn’t know how much I was going to be paid, either. The way it’s written is just a classic example of sensationalistic “yellow journalism”–screaming headlines, hyperbole, and misleading citation of statistics meant to misinform rather than to inform.</p>
<p>Why would exchange policies be much cheaper than off-exchange policies ? If an insurer sells the exact same plan in both markets, they have to charge the same price. </p>
<p>It seems to me that if there is a price difference, it’s more likely to be in the other direction, because off-exchange buyers are more likely to be price conscious since they are getting no subsidies.</p>