Brainwrap's final end of the year ACA prediction

[bigdarryl]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/25/1265262/-ACA-Roundup-1-83M-Private-4-0M-Medicaid-My-Final-Prediction

[Motown_Johnny]

1. Why doesn't anyone include the ~3.5 million aged 18-25

who are on their parent's policies?


These are also people who did not have coverage who are now covered. Insurance companies charge more for family policies than for single ones, and for more people on family policies. These young (and mostly) healthy people are paying into the health care system even if it is through a parent.

I would call it ~4 M Medicaid+ ~3.5 M Private on family plans + ~1.83 M New Private through the exchange.

Roughly 9.3 million total.

[grantcart]

3. For the reason that they are not additions.

While you rightly note that they are direct beneficiaries of the ACA law (as are all of the people who have insurance and derive other benefits) certain benchmarks are needed to judge enrollment of new people who will be making premium payments (with or without subsidies).

These numbers will provide a baseline for figuring the premiums for next year. The folks that you refer to have already been included.

The numbers and the mixes of the people that sign up before April 1 will help determine what the premiums will be for the next year.

[Motown_Johnny]

9. Then it is a Marketplace prediction, not an ACA prediction.

The semantics are incorrect. Those 3+ million people have insurance because of the ACA and additional premiums are being paid to insurance companies because of them.


If we are talking only about people signing up in the marketplace then we should say so.

[Brainwrap]

6. I do make reference to the "Under 26'ers" on the actual graph

I included a special note on the image file that graphs the numbers at the website itself:

http://acasignups.net

Scroll down below the actual spreadsheet.

[Cha]

7. Thanks and Welcome to DU,

Brainwrap.

[Motown_Johnny]

10. Thanks for responding.

I still don't know why you didn't mention them in the original article you wrote.

I see the special note in green on the graph now. Thanks for pointing it out but even that is a number from June of 2012. It is reasonable to assume that number has increased in the last ~18 months.




P.S. Welcome to DU and thanks for all the hard work on that article and the graph and spreadsheet. They are all nicely done. I hope my criticism isn't taken to seriously. I'm a nit picker. I do this all the time. Please don't let me being an azz bother you.

[grantcart]

2. Thanks for the link. I have been quoting his spreadsheet in regular updates

but had no idea who he is.

For those that are curious here is his revised prediction.

2.1 Million Private Plan Enrollees who will be covered starting January 1st.

Maybe they will reach the 7 million after all.

March will be a big month, 3 million is not outside the realm of possibility.

[former9thward]

4. No one knows what the real numbers are.

The numbers being given out are those that have selected a plan. Not those who have actually paid a premium. No one is giving out those numbers. Not the insurance companies or the government. It is like if I go on amazon and select a book for my 'wish list' or even put it in my 'shopping cart'. Amazon does not count that as a book sold until I hit the 'make the purchase' icon.

[grantcart]

5. The government doesn't have those numbers because they don't get data on the premiums.

I have been making the same point for some time, but the number of people who have bothered going through the process is significant. More significant are the people who have requested and received subsidies. The numbers for those that have been added due to Medicaid expansion are firm though because no premium is involved.

As no benefits were available until January 1st there was no incentive to make a premium payment before December 15th.

We should start seeing the numbers of new policies actually purchased around January 15th.

[Brainwrap]

8. Hi, Brainwrap here...

1. Actually, Washington State DOES break enrollments out between "enrolled but not paid" and "enrolled and paid". In their case, about 48% of their 134,000 private plan enrollees have fully paid.

Assuming this is a typical spread across the other states, it should be roughly 875,000 enrollees who have paid already.

2. Having said that, I'm not sure I understand why this is such a point of concern. My wife and I fall into the category of "enrolled but not paid yet"...but that's only because BCBSM (Michigan) hasn't happened to actually bill us yet. They will do so on the 28th, and we'll pay. This is pretty typical of a lot of insurance policies. We're still fully enrolled--we have our insurance cards and everything.

If you buy a new car with one of those "$0 down!" deals, you still get to drive the car home that day and the auto dealer still books the sale in their inventory system, so I really don't see what the fuss is about.

Now, having said that, I'm sure that some percentage of enrollees will be deadbeats, but that's typical and expected in any retail, free-market situation. If it's an unusually high percentage, that could be worthy of concern, but is a separate issue from how many are actually enrolled.

The only legitimate issue here I can think of would be if a high percentage of enrollees CAN'T pay because of technical issues between the exchange websites and the insurance company sites in getting their billing/payments processed. That's legit because of the lingering technical problems some sites have, but again, that's yet to be seen.

Meanwhile, the insurance companies are on record as saying that they're willing to accept payments up through January 10th for coverage retroactive to January 1st under the circumstances, so that's still not an issue right now.

[JaneyVee]

11. Hey, great work. Very informative spreadsheet. Thanks for your effort.

[Brainwrap]

12. You're welcome, and thanks for the kind words :)