Showing posts with label grandfathered plans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandfathered plans. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

How is the ACA affecting employer-sponsored insurance?

I am working on a reported piece that looks at how employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) is changing and how it compares to insurance offered on the ACA exchanges [update: here it is]. The basic framework is provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2014 Employer Health Benefits Survey.  Here are the premises as they now stand.  Informed input welcome!

1. The ACA has not strongly driven premium increases or cost-shifting to employees in ESI  -- though employers offering more generous plans are  beginning to react to the Cadillac tax, which takes effect in 2018. While premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenses have risen steadily, premiums rose more steeply from 2004 to 2009 than from 2009-2014, and deductibles have risen more or less steadily. The phase-out of grandfathered plans that don't comply with ACA coverage rules has meanwhile proceeded steadily; in 2014, just 26% of workers covered by ESI plans were in grandfathered plans, down from 36% in 2013, 48% in 2012 and 56% in 2011.

2. All that said, the constant cost-shifting has hit employees at small firms particularly hard. On average, they pay deductibles almost twice as high as employees of larger firms (an average of $1797 for individual coverage at firms with 3-199 employees, vs. $971 at larger firms). A higher percentage of small-firm employees (3-199 employees) remain in grandfathered plans (35%  vs. 22% in larger firms).

Thursday, October 31, 2013

No, 93 million Americans will not lose their health plans under Obamacare

Avik Roy is within his conservative pundit rights in spotlighting the grievances of the estimated 3 percent of the population who may be subject to higher health insurance premiums when the ACA takes full effect in 2014 than they currently pay for plans in the existing individual market.  He descends into partisan hackery, however, in suggesting that tens of millions more will "lose" their coverage as employers' "grandfathered" plans fall by the wayside, as they are bound to do -- and that therefore, "93 million Americans will be unable to keep their health plans under Obamacare."

Roy purports to find a nuclear bomb in interim final regulations for group health plans issued in the Federal Register in 2010:
Contrary to the reporting of NBC, the administration’s commentary in the Federal Register did not only refer to the individual market, but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance.