Dive Brief:
- Roughly 20% of people who signed up for insurance under the ACA did not pay their premiums on time, and therefore did not get coverage in January, insurance companies and industry experts told The New York Times.
- Observers say there are many reasons why people did not pay their premiums on time. Some may have decided they did not want the plan for which they had applied, some never received an invoice from the insurance company, and in some cases phone lines of some health plans were overwhelmed with calls.
- One plan, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, said that 95% of people who signed up for coverage starting on January 1 had paid by the deadline of January 10. That result, due to aggressive effort to contact consumers about their bill, was possible because fewer than 30,000 people have signed up for private health plans on the Minnesota exchange.
Dive Insight:
At least in this stage of the ACA rollout, it's difficult to tell whether those who paid the premium late found it difficult to do so financially, or were in doubt as to whether they truly wanted to sign up. However, having 80% of those who applied actually pay on time and enroll themselves seems like a solid number. I'd argue that this augurs well for the future of ACA plans.