HealthNet

ACA Update: Are Insurance Companies Ill-Equipped for ‘Obamacare’ Roll-Out?

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HealthNet stock prices from Bloomberg News. Note the stock price on Nov 8, 2013 was 27.7 (a few days after the ACA began), and the stock price for March 10, 2014 was 35.09.Someone is making money.
HealthNet stock prices from Bloomberg News. Note the stock price on Nov 8, 2013 was 27.7 (a few days after the ACA began), and the stock price for March 10, 2014 was 35.09.Someone is making money.

Since October 2013, Americans have been enrolling for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on Healthcare.gov or through insurance agents and brokers. With only a few weeks to go before the March 31, 2014 ACA enrollment deadline, the US Department of Health and Human Services has reported that more than 5 million Americans have enrolled for health insurance through the state-based exchanges.

Enrollment in the ACA and in expanded Medicaid has been patchy because states were given too much leeway regarding what care would be available, how people should enroll, and how much money and effort would be invested into educating residents about enrollment. Some states (like California) have well-developed online insurance exchanges of their own, while other states (like Arizona) allowed the federal government to create their ACA exchange websites and did little to educate residents about health insurance enrollment.

During the final weeks, non-profit groups and volunteers in Arizona have been scrambling to enroll people, while the Arizona Republican Party is scrambling to spread misinformation to discourage enrollment– with multiple speaking engagements and mass distribution of an editorial entitled Obamacare: To Enroll Or Not To Enroll? That Is The Question by local doctor, Elizabeth Lee Vliet. And on the national level millions is being spent to dissuade Americans from enrolling, while Republicans in the House offer bait-and-switch alternativesto the ACA which would cost more and cover fewer people.

As both sides of the political spectrum work hard to sway the public, my question is: Are the insurance companies really up to the task of providing care for so many new enrollees? 

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Shopping the ACA Marketplace: One Small Business’ Route to ‘Affordable’ Healthcare

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ACA-paper12-sig-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

With full implementation of the  Affordable Care Act (ACA), January 2014 marks the beginning of a new era in health insurance in the US.

For the chronically uninsured and for those with pre-existing conditions, it's been a long and financially perilous wait for all of the ACA benefits to kick in.

For anti-government, conservative ideologues, the three-year waiting period gave them time to mercilessly attack reform that will provide insurance for millions of Americans, spread layers of misinformation about "Obamacare," hold dozens of meaningless repeal votes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and hold the country hostage for 16 days in a multi-million-dollar government shutdown fiasco.

Today, December 23, 2013 is the cut-off date for enrollment in ACA insurance plans which begin January 1, 2014; the final deadline for ACA enrollment is March 31, 2014. Since the beginning of December, I have been shopping the healthcare marketplace on behalf of the ultra-small business that I work for–The American Journal of Medicine. On Friday, I submitted our final paperwork to our insurance broker.

This is the story of one small business' route to "affordable" care.

Our Journey

Our journey began long before the premier of Healthcare.gov, the much-maligned ACA enrollment website, and even before the ACA was signed into law in 2010. At the Journal, we had been unhappy with our health insurance plan through Aetna for years. Like clockwork, the cost went up 10-25% each year, forcing us to rethink coverage multiple times in order to live within our budget.  We also were dissatisfied with the limited number of even more expensive alternative plans offered to us. The Journal's editorial pages have been pushing for Medicare for all for years and broke the stories about medical bankruptcy in 2009 and continued medical bankruptcy under Romneycare in Massachusetts in 2011. Consequently, we were ready for the public option back in 2009; today, we're just glad that the ACA made it through the Republican gauntlet and the Supreme Court. Unlike recent news stories about people and small businesses wanting to keep their existing healthcare plans, we were waiting with baited breath for three years to dump our plan.

The bottomline is that with Obamacare, the Journal — and the emplopyees– will pay less for healthcare insurance. Read about our ACA Marketplace experiences and lessons learned after the jump.