ACA projections on age and insured status of enrollees under fire

Information on who signed up for health insurance in the last weeks of March is starting to emerge, but not all are biting.

Life & Health

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Projections on just who signed up for health insurance in the run up to the March deadline are beginning to trickle in. President Barack Obama claimed this week that 35% of new enrollees are under the age of 35, while the Congressional Budget Office projects that 6 million of the 8 million applicants are newly insured.

“We’ve got a sizeable part of the US population that are—for the first time, in many cases—in the position to enjoy the financial security of healthcare,” Obama said at a news conference.

Despite the celebration of the ACA’s success, however, industry analysts have their reservations about the accuracy of these figures.

Regarding age, it is important to note the 35% figure includes children below the age of 18 who are still covered by their parents’ plans. The real figure insurers are seeking is the number of young adults who signed up for health insurance and—even more crucially—are relatively healthy.

As North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm noted, an increase in young adult enrollment does not necessarily translate to lower health insurance premiums in the future.

“If it’s folks under the age of 35 who are still sick or are incurring a lot of claims, that’s going to add to the mix in terms of what the rates need to be for those products,” Hamm said, according to a Bloomberg report. “The more important demographic is what’s the health of folks enrolling in these products.”

Furthermore, the number of newly insured Americans cited by the CBO may not actually reflect the number of Americans who did not have prior insurance.

“Twenty to 33% are actually newly insured and out of eight million, that would be no more than two to three million people,” noted David Hogberg of the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington.
As such, there are still 42 million Americans projected to be uninsured by the end of 2014 and a full 31 million uninsured within 10 years.

Information still in question includes the number of new enrollees who have paid their first premium, as well as the health of the average enrollee. An analysis released earlier this month by Express Scripts indicates new enrollees may be sicker on average, based on claims data from the first two months of the year.

However, Express Scripts noted that it is too early to draw any lasting conclusions from the data, as it does not reflect the late surge of applicants who enrolled in late March and early April. Additionally, some state exchanges—like Nevada, Hawaii and Oregon—are still accepting applicants through the end of the month and even into May.

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