CBO: Individual insurance market (including ACA marketplace) at about 83% capacity

In its yearly projections of the effect of the ACA on insurance coverage, CBO has always had a category called "nongroup and other" that I found frustratingly opaque. Included were  off-exchange individual (nongroup) market enrollees, people on disability Medicare, and a miscellany including student health plans and Indian Health Service coverage.

In new projections released today, CBO breaks out the major component parts of this grab-bag -- for the first time, as far as very close watchers whom I checked with can remember. The breakout is illuminating in a couple of respects.  Here are the numbers for 2016:

These tallies shed some light -- more or less by negation -- on CBO's past overestimates of the number of exchange enrollees.

More on Charles Gaba's "Two glaring errors in the WSJ anti-Obamacare editorial"

Charles Gaba has caught a couple of glaring errors in a Wall Street Journal editorial claiming that the ACA private plan marketplace is on the road to failure. The most important error misrepresents the state of the current and potential nongroup market -- that is, the pool of people who buy or could buy their health insurance on their own, with or without ACA subsidies.

Gaba captures the main point: that contra WSJ assertions, most of those who buy their insurance off-exchange are not subsidy eligible, and are mingled in the same risk pools as those who buy on-exchange. I'd like to further clarify, though, how much progress those markets have made toward full capacity, and to what extent those who are eligible for subsidies have so far enrolled.

Here's the WSJ editorial board's "state of the market" overview:

Which insured Americans get no subsidy whatsoever?

Who are the Americans who get no help from the federal government paying for their health insurance?

The uninsured, of course. Also, those who buy their insurance in the nongroup market (on- or off-exchange) and a) earn too much to qualify for subsidies, and b) are not self-employed.

It's important to recognize that the self-employed do get a subsidy: the self-employment health insurance deduction. If your health insurance costs less than your total self-employed earnings, you can deduct the whole cost from your earnings. A recent study indicates that this deduction takes an average of 22% off the average self-employed tax filer's health insurance bill.

My question: what percentage of buyers in the nongroup market are not subsidy eligible and not self-employed? They are the only insured Americans who get no government aid paying for insurance. Most of them, that is: there is also a medical expense deduction available to any household that spends more than 10% of its Adjusted Gross Income on medical expenses, including insurance. Only expenses over 10% of AGI can be deducted.

Polling reflects the ACA's tough tradeoffs

A couple of thoughts* about Kaiser's recent analysis of its most recent survey of those who bought their insurance in the individual market in 2015, on exchange or off-exchange, ACA-compliant or not. To review some key points first (some from the original survey report, others from the analysis):

No, Virginia, ACA administrators do not need to "retain" the prior 8 million signups in 2015

Tis the season for preview articles spotlighting the challenges of signing up more uninsured and retaining the newly insured in Year 2 of the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times' Reed Abelson, in an otherwise excellent overview, repeats a common fallacy:

the Obama administration is expected to try to persuade about five million more people to sign up while also trying to ensure that eight million people who now have coverage renew for another year.

No one can or will try to ensure eight million renewals, because a very large proportion of 2014's enrollees -- perhaps half or more -- will not need to renew their coverage. They will be covered by new employers, or new spouses, or newly employed old spouses, or they will lose income and become eligible for Medicaid, or they will go on disability, or die, or, or, or...