<p>Then you better encourage the young to sign up and dilute the sick people’s effect.</p>
<p>IMHO, young people are going to sign up because their friends sign up- not because of any advertising campaign. This is just coming from experience- I have no background in this area. </p>
<p>I still firmly believe that most people don’t want to be uninsured but they’re so used to horror stories that they figure- why bother? If their friends start getting insurance and explain how easy it is (which, really, it is now compared to what it was before) and how affordable it can be, the rates of uninsured young people will go down. It might take time.</p>
<p>And I’ll say this as slowly as possible; In the risk pool, if you are including all 45 million eligible for the private market, 30 million previously uninsured plus 15 million with the old individual plan, that pool could be just as healthy. If the risk pool includes just 7 million of 30 million previously uninsured as CBO estimates in addition to the 15 million with the old individual plan, that pool is not going to be as healthy. Those 23 million staying out of health insurance are likely to be healthier.</p>
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<p>Iglooo, do you have stats to support that?</p>
<p>The 7 million is only for the first year. In 2015 it’s projected to be 15 million.</p>
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Except you aren’t considering the impact of all of us insurance buyers who are healthy & had insurance, but whose insurance policies are now being terminated so we have no choice but to buy an ACA-compliant plan.</p>
<p>Igloo do you have the data on this?</p>
<p>“In the risk pool, if you are including all 45 million eligible for the private market, 30 million previously uninsured plus 15 million with the old individual plan, that pool could be just as healthy”</p>
<p>The above and this looks like a contradiction…</p>
<p>“We have ACA to insure previously uninsured, most with pre-existing conditions.”</p>
<p>I want to see the data…</p>
<p>No, I don’t have data. I don’t know if it’s the case. I said it COULD be just as healthy if we inclufde all 45 million people in the indivisual market. In the indivisual market there are 50 million uninsured and 15 million with the old plan. Out of 50 million uninsured, about 20 million will get medicaid leaving 30 million in the private market. In practice, not all 30 million will sign up. According to CF, 7 million are expected to be newly insured.</p>
<p>I am conjecturing many of the 7 million newly insured are likely to have pre-existing conditions.</p>
<p>Where is the data, igloo?</p>
<p>I know you dont have data. I can read. ;)</p>
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<p>They are in the 15 million. I am conjecturing 7 million newly insured will be sicker than the 15 million on the average pulling down the health of the group when pooled together. If you have an influx of 7 million costly cases to a group of only 15 million, you are going to notice it.</p>
<p>^ why is any of this relevant to this thread?</p>
<p>I guess until we have real substantive numbers of subscribers into exchange, or into expanded Medicaid, nobody will know whether it is deemed a financial success or it is a death spiral. With extensions, those numbers are further down the road.</p>
<p>Getting subscribers who are young and healthy - 7 million or so - was discussed on old thread or thousands of posts ago. It will affect premium costs, but we just do not have enough data at this point.</p>
<p>I’d say it’s clearly relevant. The premiums in the private market this year are based on what the insurance companies thought the risk pool would be.</p>
<p>Now, are the premiums for next year offered in the private insurance market bigger than the premiums for similar group policies? Private insurance is about 6% more expensive than group insurance, but are the premiums more expensive than that, for similar policies? Comparing similar policies in private insurance and group insurance would let us know what the insurance companies were predicting. </p>
<p>I look at the premiums people say they’ve been paying in the private market, and they look very cheap to me compared with what employers have been paying. There’s a lot of headroom before private policies get more expensive than group policies.</p>
<p>The question will really be what 2015 premiums will look like, on private individual market and on exchange. </p>
<p>There will be folks on Medicaid, on Exchange and buying through insurance companies or brokers. Many will still be insured through employers. Then, the ones that opt for no insurance, intentionally or because they fall through cracks and cannot afford it. </p>
<p>The question I have is what the numbers for premium costs will look like for the employer plans that are not grandfathered in, and what will happen with those people. We won’t know about that group for another year, at least.</p>
<p>I agree, Samurai. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with premiums in 2015.</p>
<p>“The premiums in the private market this year are based on what the insurance companies thought the risk pool would be.”</p>
<p>Which is probably mostly guesswork since they have no numbers or prior history to predict what the pool of people will look like in the individual market in 2014.</p>
<p>I think we are going to see wider variations in 2015 among different states, because of differences in enrollment rates. For example, I think that things will probably go very well in NY, a state where many healthy people who wanted insurance were shut out before because of costs. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope for states like Wyoming. You can see a list of average premiums for 2014 here: [The</a> 50 states of Obamacare - MarketWatch](<a href=“http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-50-states-of-obamacare-2013-09-27]The”>The 50 states of Obamacare - MarketWatch) – obviously those with lower average premium costs are at an advantage for first year buy-in.</p>
<p>I’m really interested in the rates between states with Medicaid expansion and without…</p>
<p>Also a state that is promoting signups, like Kentucky, should be in good shape. For a lot of low-income people, if they go to the exchange they’re going to discover that insurance is very cheap for them.</p>