Alex Azar's poison pitch to the unsubsidized uninsured

Charles Gaba is out with a magisterial take-down of HHS Secretary Alex Azar's op-ed touting the Trump administration's promotion of  medically underwritten 'short-term" health plans (now with terms of up to 364 days, renewable twice) as a solution for those who have been priced out of the ACA marketplace.

Gaba points out that in decrying the high cost of ACA-compliant plans for the unsubsidized, Azar ignores:

• The extent to which various forms of Trump administration sabotage have driven the huge premium increases of the past two years.
• The premium growth trend in the pre-ACA individual market.
• The average actuarial value of pre-ACA plans compared to ACA-compliant plans.
• The likely impact of a barely-regulated short-term market on the ACA risk pool.
• The gross inadequacies of short-term plans now on the market.

I want to focus on two other major sleights of hand Azar indulges in. The first concerns the target market potentially served by short-term plans, and the second, the source of their affordability.

Unsubsidized on-exchange enrollment is also shrinking fast

Off-exchange enrollment in ACA-compliant plans is contracting sharply. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that average monthly enrollment in off-exchange ACA-compliant plans was down 25% from 2016 to 2017. Further, all off-exchange enrollment (including in grandfathered and grandmothered pre-ACA plans) was down 38% from the first quarter of 2017 to the first quarter of 2018. It's not yet possible to break out the drop in ACA-compliant off-exchange plans alone, but it's likely close to that 38% top line.

Wow.  The Kaiser study also shows that the average individual market premium rose from $339 in 2016 to $490 in 2018 -- a 45% increase* over two years. That's driving a lot of unsubsidized people out of the market.

It's known, but has not been much emphasized, that the drop in unsubsidized enrollment through the ACA exchanges, is also sharp. Kaiser shows a drop from 1.6 million to 1.4 million in effectuated enrollment from March 2017 to March 2018. And as I noted recently, Kaiser chose not to estimate an undercount in CMS's report of effectuated enrollment in 2017 (the undercount is acknowledged in an endnote).

Inflation that tracks your march to death

As the ACA-compliant individual market shuddered under a second consecutive round of premium hikes averaging well north of 20% in 2018, I took in an earful of stories from people in their fifties and sixties who were paying full freight, partly recounted here.

One thing that struck me somewhere along the way is the impact of the personal inflation hit induced simply by aging. In the best of markets, late-middle-agers will pay 4-5% more in many years simply for getting a year older. That's a turbo-charge to double-digit hikes for everyone (particularly for couples).

David Anderson, who may do a more analytical post about this, was kind enough to pull an ACA age rating chart for me. I begin at age 45,  just before price increases accelerate. This is for one bronze plan in Arizona:

On-exchange or off-exchange, the unsubsidized seem to make similar choices

Back in April, I set out to compare the coverage obtained by subsidized enrollees in health insurance plans in the ACA marketplace in 2016 with the coverage obtained by unsubsidized buyers. The measure compared was actuarial value (AV) -- the percentage of the average enrollee's annual medical costs paid by the insurer.

Long story short: the average weighted AV for subsidized buyers in the 38 states using HealthCare.gov was 81.4%, right in line with estimated averages for employer-sponsored insurance. For the 15% of HealthCare.gov enrollees who did not qualify for subsidies, average weighted AV was 68.9%. Averages in the state-based exchanges are probably about the same. The more comprehensive coverage obtained by subsidized enrollees stems from the fact that about two thirds of them also access secondary Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR subsidies, available only with silver plans.

I also inferred that the coverage obtained by those who bought ACA compliant plans outside the marketplace was roughly comparable to that obtained by  unsubsidized marketplace enrollees.  And I've just happened on some corroboration.