Dive Brief:
- Five states (Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Washington) have released reports that show a 14.3% drop in exchange customers from a combined 698,200 to 598,000 enrollees since open enrollment ended Feb.1.
- This represents a loss worse than the 13% drop in national enrollment between the end of the 2015 enrollment period and March 31, 2015, with 1.5 million policy cancellations among 11.7 million enrolled.
- If enrollment in the remainder of states is down 7.5% that indicates a drop of one million customers from the 12.7 million who enrolled as of Feb. 1, Investor's Business Daily reported.
Dive Insight:
Overall, national enrollment dropped almost 14% in the last three quarters of 2015, down to 8.8 million. A similar decline over the remainder of this year would drop national enrollment down to about 10 million by the end of the year. This reinforces concerns that the amount of paying ACA customers isn't sufficient to balance the older, higher-cost customer base that has crowded the exchanges, Investor's Business Daily stated. UnitedHealth said these concerns will lead the company to exit all but a few of exchanges in 34 states where they are now in business. So far, UnitedHealth will exit at least 22 state markets.
Premiums are expected to increase more this year versus last year, even though the Obama administration cited an actual increase of 8%, an Investor's Business Daily analysis found the premium increase to be 10%. Anthem, with about 180,000 ObamaCare enrollees last year, is seeking a 15.6% premium hike in Virginia for 2017.
Colorado reported the most dramatic drop in enrollment at 23%, which may be due, in part, to Colorado HealthOP, a nonprofit ACA co-op, going out of business. Customers who couldn't get subsidies are now paying 34% more for catastrophic plans and 21% more for bronze plans than in 2015.
Connecticut's enrollment dropped about 9.2% with about half not paying, 20% failing to provide the required information, 12% shifting to Medicaid and another 10% asking to have their plan canceled. Minnesota's enrollment dropped 10.4% from early February to March. Oklahoma's enrollment fell 15.1% between Feb. 1 and the end of February. And Washington had lost 12% of customers as of the end of February.