<p>“Oh, the GP plan is that you only get free insurance if you are uninsured?”</p>
<p>Okay, those with preexisting conditions who are not poor, will have to pay premiums for medicaid. Let’s call it medicaid plus.</p>
<p>GP, you just gave me the answer on how many newly insured there are in Cal. :)</p>
<p>OK, so you get free insurance if you’re poor (like now), and you have to pay premiums if you are not poor but you’re sick. And what if you’re not poor and not sick-- do you have to pay premiums? And what happens if you are not sick now, but you get sick-- do you have to pay premiums then? Inquiring minds want to know.</p>
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<p>Yeah, that little chunk of thirteen million people. Alotta guys think thirteen million people is a big number.</p>
<p>No more guessing…</p>
<p>At the end of Feb…877,000 people signed on an exchange. About 85 percent of people that already had insurance bought insurance according to McKinsey. So based on 1.1 million people… 85 percent is 935,000 people. And one more thing…
In Order to get to 100 percent formerly insured paid and 50 percent uninsured paid and the 85 percent paid totall… The ratio is approximately 70 percent formerly insured and 30 percent uninsured at the end of Feb. That ratio is going to move this month. </p>
<p>So…877,000 signed on at the exchange at the end of Feb. 70 percent of that is 613,900.
Newly insured is 877,000- 613,900 or 263100 on the exchange.</p>
<p>But at the end of Feb. We know there were approximately 935,000 formerly insured that signed up.
935,000-613,900 = 321100. That means there are another 137614 newly insured that signed up off an exchange. (This keeps all the ratios in line).</p>
<p>So…at the end of Feb…we have 935,000 reinsured and 400,714 newly insured. </p>
<p>Now this is where it gets good.</p>
<p>A little guessing…not much though…</p>
<p>We know we should get close to 1.1 million…to match the previously insured… But we arent going to get all 1.1 million signed up. According to GP…most of the 1.1 million people are now uninsured because of cancelled plans. Lol. </p>
<p>What number should we use that blew the coop? Let’s say zero. The cancelled policy stuff was bs anyway. :)</p>
<p>So…that means 1.1 million-935,000= 165,000. So…once we sign up 165,000 in March…All the rest are newly insured. </p>
<p>So…we had 400,714 newly insured at the end of Feb.</p>
<p>400,000 more…sign up in March…very likely…</p>
<p>165,000 goes to formerly insured… 235,000 goes to newly insured. That makes 635,714 newly insured. </p>
<p>Plus…there are more going to be more newly insured off exchange. </p>
<p>Now…if the McKinsey report goes above 100 percent previously insured signing up…we know people switched out of group plans and other plans…</p>
<p>Then we can recalculate.</p>
<p>If the McKinsey report stays below 100 percent…we can recalculate that too. Right now we are using 100 percent of 1.1 million previously insured. </p>
<p>The 635,714 number does not include off exchane sign ups for the newly insured in March. </p>
<p>I am going a little brain dead but I think that adds another 123036 newly insured off exchange. I am using a similar ratio of newly insured signing up on an exchange vs off an exchange. 1.91. That should be very close.</p>
<p>Newly insured equals 758,750, with 400,000 sign ups on exchange in March.</p>
<p>Ok…so just to recap…
End of Feb 400,714 newly insured.
March… 358,036.</p>
<p>Total 758,750. Newly insured.</p>
<p>We can argue about percentage paid…but we will get that answer so what is the point of arguing. I was told 90% plus. :).</p>
<p>The amounts of newly insured signing up on or off off exchange doesnt matter much. . I did it this way to simplify things. Lol. The total is correct unless I made some math errors. Luckily…nobody checks my numbers. :)</p>
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<p>That’s a non-sequitur, Flossy. There are hundreds of thousands, probably millions of people who are and have been Medicaid-eligible who had no idea they were Medicaid-eligible, or who didn’t even know that Medicaid existed, or who didn’t know how it worked or how to sign up, or who were too proud or too embarrassed to seek out what they understood to be medical “welfare,” who are now going to the exchanges and end up signing up for Medicaid because they’re being told they’re eligible and they can get health care coverage at no direct cost to them. In places like Kentucky, which has one of the most vibrant and successful state-run exchanges (and one of the least-healthy populations), many of these people are greatly relieved if not ecstatic to be enrolled, because many of them had been putting off necessary medical treatments and procedures because they couldn’t afford private insurance and certainly couldn’t afford the out-of-pocket costs of the care they needed. To say that the massive outreach and promotional aspects of the ACA, and the information portal it provides to steer these people into coverage they are eligible for, isn’t “helping” them is not only wrong-headed, it’s just downright callous.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-rural-kentucky-health-care-debate-takes-back-seat-as-people-sign-up-for-insurance/2013/11/23/449dc6e0-5465-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-rural-kentucky-health-care-debate-takes-back-seat-as-people-sign-up-for-insurance/2013/11/23/449dc6e0-5465-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.kentucky.com/2014/02/22/3104288/eastern-kentucky-counties-lead.html”>http://www.kentucky.com/2014/02/22/3104288/eastern-kentucky-counties-lead.html</a></p>
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<p>No, the rest weren’t “already handled” if they didn’t sign up. And what’s that “little chunk that now qualify due to expansion”? In Washington State, the only state that attempts to differentiate and separately count new sign-ups who newly qualify under expansion from new-sign-ups who would have been eligible pre-expansion, the official count is that 2/3 of new sign-ups newly qualify because of expansion, and new sign-ups roughly equal renewal sign-ups in numbers. It’s anybody’s guess whether we can extrapolate from a single state’s figure to a national figure for expansion states, but at a minimum it suggests that a very large fraction of new Medicaid sign-ups are newly eligible because of Medicaid expansion, a critical component of the overall ACA package.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/11/3028202/wash-medicaid-enrollment-surpasses.html”>http://www.theolympian.com/2014/03/11/3028202/wash-medicaid-enrollment-surpasses.html</a></p>
<p>dstark, your numbers are a crock. Let’s make it simple. If it is true that only 1/2 of the uninsured are paying for their plans on the exchange then the following must be true: Of the 877,000 that signed up by the end of Feb, 85% paid or 745,450. Of that amount 70% of the 877,000 were previously insured or 613,900 and 50% of the remaining 30% are uninsured or 131,550. The total uninsured on the exchange is 131,550. As for off exchange, very few of these people were previously uninsured. We know this because the overwhelming percentage of the uninsured were not insured because they couldn’t afford it. These people qualify for subsidies so I doubt many of them went off-exchange. The total previously uninsured who are now insured is certainly less than 200,000.</p>
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<p>It’s a little confusing because of the age change. My birthday is near the beginning of the year and I just turned 60. Under the old system the premiums were rated in 5-year chunks – so I was paying the rate for 55-59 year olds. Without ACA I would have expected my rate to jump to a 60-65 year old category. </p>
<p>So if I compare the rate of my 2013 plan rated for age 55 with my 2014 plan rated for age 59, there was a big jump. But if I look at what the rate jump would have been for age 60+ and factor in the 9% premium increase that Blue Shield got for 2014, there’s about a $20/monthly difference, with the ACA plan being higher – but that may be accounted for by some of the ACA taxes-- so it may be that when you add the ACA taxes on top of the 2014 premium hike, then a 60-year old who in my region who had grandfathered status might be paying the same or more.</p>
<p>I’m actually paying the rate for age 59 because the ACA plans are rated by year, so with ACA I can lock in a year’s worth of premiums based on my age as of Jan. 1. But I know that under the old system that never happened – it seemed to me that every 5 years I would get a birthday greeting from the insurance company in the form of a rate increase. I mean, there was never a time that I had post-birthday insurance under a younger age rating. </p>
<p>The plan is about the same – somewhat higher deductible and out-of-pocket max for in-network coverage, but a substantially reduced maximum for out-of-network coverage – so I’m probably better off if I need catastrophic care. However, due to my good health, I’ve never actually managed to get near to hitting a deductible since the year my daughter was born - so that issue is somewhat academic. I mean, if I have $600 in out-of-pocket expenses this year, then it really doesn’t matter if my deductible is $3500 (old policy) or $4500 (new policy). Either way, I’m paying $600. </p>
<p>“it’s just downright callous.”</p>
<p>Let’s pull out the everybody-who-thinks-Obamacare-is-nuts card is a callous or mean person. That’s a load of you know what.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, GP, but to say that someone with cancer who is now getting treatment when previously they weren’t because they were unaware they were eligible for coverage “isn’t being helped” is insensitive in the extreme. That’s what I mean by “callous.” </p>
<p>GP, you are talking paid…I am talking sign ups. </p>
<p>My 400,000 number at the end of the month of Feb is people who signed up that werent insured. If only 50 percent paid…then at the end of Feb the number is 200,000 paid and insured. I could have written that better I guess.</p>
<p>My last post of 758,750 is newly insured and 100 percent paid So if it is 50 percent instead…the newly insured is 379,375.
If the number turns out to be 80 percent paid…it will be 607,000 newly insured that paid.</p>
<p>GP, my problem with your numbers is that we know that 85% of those 877,000 February signees, or 745,450 people, were eligible for subsidies. And there were only about half a million people who already had insurance and who were eligible for subsidies. </p>
<p>By the end of Feb…we know a few things…85 percent paid…that is from the insurance companies.
We know how many sign ups there are on the exchange. We are told by GP the newly insured 'sign ups" pay about 50%. Looking at many numbers…it looks like 1.1 million had insurance in the individual market.</p>
<p>Ok …we can shift the numbers around. It doesnt really matter as far as the newly insured goes as long as the above numbers are correct. </p>
<p>The percentage that qualify for subsidies that already had insurance is a good point.
So…I wrote…613,900 signed up on an exchange with previous insurance and 321,100 signed up of exchange which equals 935,000. </p>
<p>I wrote 263,100 signed up on an exchange and 137,614 signed up off exchange. </p>
<p>We can switch 120,000 of the previous enrollees from on exchange sign ups to off exchange.
And move 120,000 newly signees from off exchange to on exchange. The numbers would look like this.</p>
<p>Formerly insured 493,900 on an exchange… 441,100 off an exchange.
Newly signees… 383,100 signed up on an exchange… 17,614 signed up off an exchage.</p>
<p>Something like 13 to 15 percent of on exchange signees do no get subsidies. </p>
<p>I can tweak the March numbers too. Throw most of the previous insurance signees off the exchange. </p>
<p>CF, if the McKinsey survey (I think it was McKinsey) said only 1/2 of the previously uninsured are making their first payment and overall the number is 85%, then my numbers have to be accurate. Like dstark said - it means that 70% of all those who signed up for the exchange had to be previously insured. Otherwise, it would be impossible to have only 1/2 of the uninsured actually paying for their insurance.</p>
<p>No…McKinsey used on and off exchange signees.</p>
<p>It is a 70-30 ratio when we add up both on and off exchange signees. Actually The ratio may be slightly different than 70-30 because 100 percent of formerly insured havent paid yet. But it is very very very close.</p>
<p>I was just using the 70-30 number on both on and off exchanges because it was easier to figure out the uninsureds. The 70-30 ratio just has to hold for total signups. Sorry. </p>
<p>I think the number newly insureds paying up was 53 percent. 50 percent is close enough. </p>
<p>We are just trying to get close here. :).</p>
<p>bclintonk, I have no objection to expanding medicaid to sign up poor people who couldn’t afford insurance or people with preexisting conditions, although the latter would have to pay if they could afford it. This is a simple solution to the uninsured problem without totally disrupting the insurance market for everyone else.</p>
<p>dstark, it would have been nice if Covered Ca had required that all sign-ups disclose if they previously had insurance. However, why do anything that makes sense. Leave it to them to turn it into an onerous exercise.</p>
<p>I may figure the numbers differently next time. Offline. And then write them up. I didnt mean to literally take 70-30 ratios on both on and off exchanges. Sorry. On exchange the ratio could be 56%- 44 fomerly insured/ newly insured while off exchange the numbers could be 96%-4% formerly insured/newly insured. This gives a total of 70/30 in the above case. There are many combinations that can give us a 70/30 ratio.</p>
<p>GP…I am giving you credit. The percentage paid was the missing link. And…you are right… I am not deducting anything from the sign ups for not paying. That is up to you. I wouldnt use 50 percent paid though. Really. The bills arent all due. And 400,000 Californians havent signed up in March yet either. May not happen.</p>
<p>I hsve no problem with people finding math issues with what I write. As I said, CF’s point was a good one. There are a lot of variables and they have to fit. </p>
<p>I hope the Feb numbers are good now though. :)</p>