Bombshell: 20% of Obamacare Enrollees Have Already Cancelled
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Obamacare is a complete disaster and everyone knows it, as approval for the law has dropped to only about 26%. Democrats know that they are on track to pay the price for their support for the law in the midterm elections.
People are seeing their premiums double, deductibles and co-pays are going up, and their preferred doctors or hospitals are not participating in their particular exchange plan that they were more or less forced to enroll in.
People are beginning to see that Obamacare is going to decimate the middle class. Furthermore, more and more people are coming to the realization that Obamacare isn’t even really about healthcare at all, but more about power and control, and many are wondering if the law was actually designed to fail, in order to set the stage for a single-payer, government run system.
Now we find that about 20% of all Obamacare exchange enrollees never paid their first premiums, meaning that their plans have been cancelled before they even got started.
(H/T New York Times)
Lindy Wagner, a spokeswoman for Blue Shield of California, said that 80 percent of those who signed up for its plans had paid by the due date, Jan. 15. Blue Shield has about 30 percent of the exchange market in the state. Matthew N. Wiggin, a spokesman for Aetna, said that about 70 percent of people who signed up for its health plans paid their premiums. For Aetna policies taking effect on Jan. 1, the deadline for payment was Jan. 14, and for products sold by Coventry Health Care, which is now part of Aetna, the deadline was Jan. 17. Mark T. Bertolini, the chief executive of Aetna, said last week that the company had 135,000 “paid members,” out of 200,000 who began to enroll through the exchanges. “I think people are enrolling in multiple places,” he said in a conference call. “They are shopping. And what happens is that they never really get back on HealthCare.gov to disenroll from plans they prior enrolled in. ”Kristin E. Binns, a vice president of WellPoint, said that 76 percent of people selecting its health plans on an exchange had paid their share of the first month’s premium by the due date of Jan. 31. The company had received more than 500,000 applications for individual coverage through the exchanges in 14 states, she said.
A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services claims that the government doesn’t know how many people have actually paid their first premiums, and thus has no idea how many people are actually “covered”, but that is likely not entirely true as the insurance companies have been providing information to them on a regular basis, as required by law.
One big company, Humana, said it had received 200,000 applications for insurance through the exchanges. “About 75 percent of the people paid, and 25 percent did not pay,” said Thomas T. Noland Jr., a senior vice president there. Customers had until Jan. 31 to pay for coverage that took effect on Jan. 1. Greg Thompson, a spokesman for the Health Care Service Corporation, which offers Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in Illinois, Texas and three other states, said that “around 80 percent” of people choosing those plans had paid their first month’s premium by the Jan. 30 due date.
Some companies are having better luck at getting people to pay, but they are usually smaller companies that offer regional plans, or are located in states with such low numbers of enrollees that they were able to contact people and remind them to pay on time.
Elizabeth A. W. Williams, spokeswoman for Independence Blue Cross, in Philadelphia, said the company had extended the payment deadline to Jan. 28, then extended it again to Feb. 15 and made many phone calls urging people to pay. “As a result,” Ms. Williams said, “we have received payment from 84 percent of our customers who purchased Independence Blue Cross health plans on HealthCare.gov — 84 percent of the 27,528 people who enrolled through the federal marketplace in Independence Blue Cross health plans with coverage effective Jan. 1. ”Scott Keefer, a vice president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, said that 95 percent of people who signed up for coverage starting on Jan. 1 had paid premiums by the deadline of Jan. 10. The company, he said, made aggressive efforts to contact consumers and remind them that they needed to pay.
Regardless of how many people actually paid their first month’s premium or not, the more important numbers to look at will be next year’s enrollment numbers, after the employer mandate kicks in and everyone that gets insurance through their job is suddenly hit with increasing premiums, deductibles, co-pays, or gets dropped from their coverage completely.
This law is so horrendously bad that more and more people are deciding to opt out and take their chances with the penalty. Many doctors and hospitals are opting-out as well, choosing to not participate in the exchanges.
Hopefully, the law will eventually be repealed or struck down in court as unconstitutional, and a violation of people’s liberty. |
