2016 Obamacare Outlook

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI One of the more Obamacare fluent reporters just emailed me a set of questions regarding the 2016 outlook for Obamacare. I thought I would share my responses with you: According to early CMS data, 38% of exchange enrollees are under age 35. Is the risk pool beginning to stabilize?  It’s too soon to know if the pool is beginning to stabilize. First, the administration’s announcement that 38% of the pool is below age 35 is disingenuous. They are counting all of the children that show up on the rolls with their families. They did not give us the far more important age 18-to-35 number. Second, the overall subsidy eligible exchange penetration stood at about 35% at the end of 2015. Ideally, Obamacare needs to about double its penetration of the eligible to assure a balanced pool of the sick and the healthy. Then of course, we always see these big enrollment numbers being announced by the administration only to see the block shrink dramatically by year-end. So, it will really be a year before all of the dust settles on the 2016 enrollment and we really know what the claim levels are relative to the premiums being charged. If rates increase too much in 2017, will those young people jump ship? I worry more about the really poor take-up rates for the healthy people who have not signed up in the 200% of federal poverty level and above brackets than I worry about the percentage of the young who have signed up. Way too much emphasis is put on this age ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: THCB The Business of Health Care Robert Laszewski Source Type: blogs