An analysis just released by California’s health insurance exchange, Covered California, offers the first real insight into the depth of the Obamacare cancellation crisis.
About 450,000 of the 900,000 cancelled California policyholders will see rate hikes, according to the analysis released by Covered California. That’s 50% of all cancelled Californians who will be paying more.
Most strikingly, half of those cancelled policyholders are getting policies that are little different from the ones cancelled, deemed by Covered California “comparable policies. ” In other words, half of cancelled California policyholders are paying more, in some cases a lot more, for policies that are worth no more under the Affordable Care Act. Covered California reports the other half – 225,000 -- will pay more for better benefits since they had “Thinner Plan.”
Despite the ugly stats, the Covered California’s board of political appointees voted to block President Obama’s call for extending cancellations for another year. The Covered California contracts with health insurance companies, written at the insurers’ request, required them to cancel the 900,000 Californians. Thursday the board of political appointees refused to reverse course, arguing that would create more problems.
The happier headline Friday that 360,000 Californians have applied for coverage with California Covered is little surprise given that 900,000 policyholders have nowhere else to go because of its actions. And that was the point of the cancellations – drive the individual policyholders into Covered California’s pool.
The problem is that pool has premiums that are much higher than what they should be and doctor and hospital networks that are much too small. Cancelled policyholders would care less if they had comparable prices and comparable benefits. And that’s what reformers should be fixing, rather than defending as reasonable.
35 states have rate regulation but not California. So benefits and premiums will continue to be out of whack until voters set the insurance industry and its political allies straight through a ballot measure next November, which requires approval by the elected insurance commissioner for rate hikes and benefit changes.
The Covered California analysis shows that 35% of cancelled policyholders will get subsidies for policies, so they will get rate relief under the Act. That doesn’t mean taxpayers aren’t paying too much for those policies, only that low income consumers are getting help.
The analysis, by one of the biggest boosters of the ACA, discredits an argument among other boosters that is troubling: why do we care that cancelled policyholders are losing ‘junk insurance.”
Our consumer group supported the ACA, and its research and education inspired its bans on junk insurance, preexisting condition limitations and medical underwriting. The fact is, however, that cancelled policies in California are, by and large, not junk. Their physician and hospital networks under old policies are far broader than under the Covered California plans. Of course, no one is watching, since our insurance commissioner has no power over prices.
Rate regulation is one answer, but until the 2014 election, when California voters can make that change, backers of the ACA also have to stop insisting its policies are always better, even if they cost more and cause doctor dislocation. That just won’t fly with a public that knows far better. Californians know when their doctors are not in the networks in the new plans and their premiums are higher.
If we want to save the ACA, then we better make it work. That includes acknowledging its flaws and trying to make them better.
In a state like California, without rate regulation and with much ACA support, it’s unthinkable that Covered California would buck the president and California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones’ call for a reprieve on cancellations when its own numbers show 450,000 are paying more under the ACA.
It’s the continuation of a troubling logic that you are either for the ACA, and the relief it extends to 48 million uninsured, or against it. That type of reasoning will alienate the middle class, which is largely without subsidies and facing a real crisis in cost in states like California. These policyholders need relief too. And that means bucking the insurance industry, something its business partners at Covered California seem completely unwilling to do.
If the most ardent backers of the ACA don’t start to think like average citizens, there’s little reason to believe the vital center and muddled middle will continue to support the ACA. It’s time to wake up and smell the rate hikes and insurance company shenanigans for what they are – wrong, plain and simple. Then we can work together on fixing them.
Posted by Jamie Court, author of The Progressive's Guide to Raising Hell and President of Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing an effective voice for taxpayers and consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics. Visit us on Facebook and Twitter.
