<p>dstark, 6.2 million, I might have gone for the over. ;)) </p>
<p>You’ve given me another way to look at California, dstark. I think this may be restating what you say, but here goes. We have on the order of a million people in California who had insurance last year, and who are not eligible for subsidies this year. We only have about 150,000 people who are not eligible for subsidies and who signed up on the exchange.</p>
<p>That leaves at least 850,000 people who had insurance last year in California, and who didn’t sign up on the exchange. Are we to believe that these people, who had insurance last year, and who have at least a middle-class income, have suddenly decided that having health insurance is not a good idea? Or should we believe that the vast majority of people who had insurance last year still want it this year?</p>
<p>This is silly. Of course the vast majority of those people are going to buy insurance. Just like everyone here who had individual insurance-- they grumbled, and found some way to get insured.</p>
<p>People who had insurance last year<br>
PLUS People who are newly insured this year<br>
MINUS People who had insurance last year but not this year</p>
<p>EQUALS People who have insurance this year</p>
<hr>
<p>Here’s something else that has to add up:</p>
<p>People who bought insurance on the exchange
PLUS People who bought insurance off exchange including renewals of existing plans</p>
<p>where are the grandfathered plans in these equations? If I remember correctly, GP’s insurance got cancelled while Calmom cancelled her grandfathered insurance to join coveredca in order to get a subsidy. If she did not qualify for it, she could have stayed back in her old insurance.</p>
<p>The grandfathered plans are in “People who bought insurance off exchange including renewals of existing plans.” They are also in “People who had insurance last year” and “People who have insurance this year.”</p>
<p>As far as Calif goes, I am counting every person cancelled plan or not, if they qualify for subsidies, they bought an exchange plan. Plus, another 10 percent of insureds switched to an exchange plan even though they did not qualify for subsidies at the time of signing up.</p>
<p>If people qualify for subsidies and they keep their old plan instead…there are going to be fewer formerly insured and more newly insured buying on an exchange.
This actually causes the newly insures to be under counted. One reason why I said 500,000 is a minimum. We could be talking hundreds of thousands more newly insured. </p>
<p>Texaspg: We know the total number of people insured in December (in California, where we are doing these calculations, it’s about 1.5 to 1.6 million) . We know the total number of people who have bought policies on the exchanges (in California, it’s about a million). We know the total number of people who have bought policies on the exchanges and are eligible for subsidies (in California, it’s about 850,000). We know what percentage of everyone insured last year was eligible for subsidies this year (around 39% in California).</p>
<p>From those numbers, we can calculate a lower bound on the number of people who had insurance last year (whether grandfathered or not) and who didn’t buy insurance on the exchange this year. For California, we know that AT LEAST 850,000 people had insurance last year, were not eligible for subsidies this year, and did not buy insurance on the exchanges this year. Either those people renewed their existing grandfathered plans if they had them, or they bought new plans, or they chose to go without insurance. </p>
<p>If you want to say that fewer people have private insurance this year than last year, you are saying that about half the people who had insurance last December didn’t buy insurance for this year. That’s logically possible. I think it’s vanishingly unlikely.</p>
<p>Only the crew at CC could take the ehealthinsurance survey and totally bastardize the results to suit their agenda.</p>
<p>No amount of spinning or prevaricating can change the obvious: The unsubsidized are getting screwed. </p>
<p>“For the fourth quarter of 2013, individual premiums for 2013 plans averaged $171 per month; in the same period, individual premiums for 2014 plans averaged $309 per month.”</p>
<p>“Family premiums for 2013 plans averaged $378 per month; in the same period, family premiums for 2014 plans averaged $732 per month.”</p>
<p>GP, thanks for pointing me back to the esurance Price Index page. The graph that I did my calculations on, the pie graph at the bottom of this chart:</p>
<p>Now I’m assuming that esurance’s pie chart is either mislabeled or just wrong, and that the 2013 premiums were much less than that pie chart says. And therefore, my claim that esurance premiums didn’t go up much from 2013 to 2014 is just completely wrong. They did go up, and a lot.</p>
<p>CF, the graph you were looking at is only for 2014 Obamacare-compliant plans sold in the last quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of 2014… The pie chart in the PDF file is comparing 2013 and 2014 plans sold in the last quarter of 2013. The PDF file is the relevant document.</p>
<p>Mislabeled, at least in regard to page six of your second link, CF. Data for 2013 and 2014 is plotted over the last quarter of last year. That the data spread only begins when ACA was implemented makes me wonder what secrets the graphs really hold in regards to the premise of GP’s original link: that insurance is more expensive now than it was pre-ACA.</p>
<p>Lest someone brings forth the miracle of subsidization again, consider the bolded, in particular the last three words, the rebuttal:
<p>I was misled by the pie chart at the bottom. I still don’t understand what that pie chart is supposed to represent. I interpreted it as 2013 premiums, because of the label, “4th Quarter, 2013.” Perhaps it is premiums for 2014 plans sold in the 4th quarter of 2013? </p>
<p>In any case, I’m sorry that I posted wrong information. I would delete the post if I could, since I don’t want to mislead anyone.</p>