Looks like New Jersey's reinsurance trade-off paid off

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New Jersey's Department of Banking and Insurance has published second quarter enrollment numbers for the state's individual market for health insurance. Some upside surprises:

New Jersey Individual Market Enrollment, Second Quarter 2018 to Second Quarter 2019

Venue	Q2 2019	Q2 2018	# change	% change
On-exchange	220,217	222,696	(2,479)	-1.1%
Off-exchange	92,798	85,361	7,437	+8.7%
Total	313,015	308,057	4,958	+1.6%

• Off-exchange enrollment is up from the first quarter -- unusual, because anyone enrolling after December 15, 2018 would have to qualify for a Special Enrollment Period. In Q1, off-exchange enrollment was up 2.98% year-over-year. In Q2, it's up 8.7% over Q2  2018, to 92,798. 


• On-exchange enrollment, which was down a disappointing 7.1% as of the end of Open Enrollment, has had much lighter attrition than in previous years. It's down just 1.6% since Q1, compared to an average Q1-to-Q2 drop of  6.8% in the three previous years. Accordingly, it's down just 1.1% from Q2 2018.


• Total individual market enrollment is up 1.6% compared to Q2 2018.  That's all in ACA-compliant plans, as New Jersey bans the lightly regulated, medically underwritten short-term plans promoted by the Trump administration.

New Jersey's 2019 experience is something of a case study for what you might call the reinsurance tradeoff.

New Jersey individual market premiums set to rise, bucking national trend

Surprise...while individual market premiums for 2020 are up an average of just 0.7% in the 40-odd states tracked so far* by Charles Gaba, requested rates are up a weighted average of 8.6% in New Jersey -- after a 9% drop last year, the product mainly of a new reinsurance program and a state-enacted individual mandate.

AmeriHealth, which gained market share this year and currently enrolls 41% of the total NJ individual market, is requesting increases averaging 11%. Horizon Blue Cross, with 62% market share, is requesting increases averaging 6.2%. Oscar, with 4.4% market share, is requesting a 16.3% average increase.

Here are the rate requests (from https://ratereview.healthcare.gov/). Enrollment is negligible in Horizon Health of New Jersey, Horizon's HMO. AmeriHealth HMO accounts for 11.4% of AmeriHealth's Q1 2019 enrollment. Oxford Health enrollment is negligible.

Some context, presented without attempt at causal explanation:

New Jersey off-exchange enrollment rose in 2019: Did cheap off-exchange silver help?

Good news for New Jersey's individual market for health insurance: while on-exchange enrollment, announced late last December, was down a disappointing 7%, those losses were partly offset (as some observers had hoped) by off-exchange enrollment gains announced today:


Why was enrollment down on-exchange, and up off-ex?  In brief: the state's swift action in 2018 to stand up a reinsurance program and pass a state individual mandate resulted in an average premium decrease of 9%, That drop did not help the large majority of on-exchange enrollees who obtained premium subsidies. As I explained last January:

base premiums affect only unsubsidized buyers, and in 2019 premiums in New Jersey were actually higher than in 2018 for most subsidized enrollees, as benchmark silver plan premiums, which determine subsidies dropped further than the average for all plans. For a 40 year-old with an income of $30k, the cheapest bronze plan cost 12-22% more in 2019 than in 2018 (varying by region) -- that is, $13-$25 more per month. Cheapest silver was also up slightly in most of the state

The drop did help unsubsidized enrollees, however. And as DOBI notes today, the unsubsidized had some motive to migrate off-exchange: