[moving this forward per request for input at bottom...]
Charles Gaba, ACA signups tracker extraordinaire, dives into a scary-sounding claim about attrition among people who signed up for private health plans on ACA exchanges -- Aetna enrollments to drop 30%! -- and provides some clarity: attrition for private insurers generally is likely coming in at about 2.5% per month, as expected.
That attrition -- offset, to an unclear degree*, by off-season "special enrollment period signups -- is expected and normal. A Kaiser study found that only 62% of people who had individual market coverage in January 2010 still had in July 2010. According to an older study by Mathematica Policy Research, while, 5.3 percent of the non-elderly population had non-group [individual market] coverage in any given month, only 2.1 percent held non-group coverage for the entire year, and 9.7 percent had non-group coverage at some point during the year.
Of the four people I know personally who obtained insurance on ACA exchanges, none will stay pat for more than fourteen months, and two will be off their plans within six months of signup. One is a woman recently divorced who found a job in July and was covered by her employer as of August 1; another is entering a graduate program that provides free (or at least premium-free) health insurance, effective Sept. 1. A third is switching from a high-deductible ACA plan to insurance provided by his wife's employer. Another qualified for Medicaid, then found a job (without insurance) in June, notified the authorities and was allowed to remain on Medicaid for a year, dated from the point when he reported change of status. If his income doesn't change, he'll qualify for a subsidized private plan with Cost Sharing Reduction when his Medicaid eligibility ends.
Charles Gaba, ACA signups tracker extraordinaire, dives into a scary-sounding claim about attrition among people who signed up for private health plans on ACA exchanges -- Aetna enrollments to drop 30%! -- and provides some clarity: attrition for private insurers generally is likely coming in at about 2.5% per month, as expected.
That attrition -- offset, to an unclear degree*, by off-season "special enrollment period signups -- is expected and normal. A Kaiser study found that only 62% of people who had individual market coverage in January 2010 still had in July 2010. According to an older study by Mathematica Policy Research, while, 5.3 percent of the non-elderly population had non-group [individual market] coverage in any given month, only 2.1 percent held non-group coverage for the entire year, and 9.7 percent had non-group coverage at some point during the year.
Of the four people I know personally who obtained insurance on ACA exchanges, none will stay pat for more than fourteen months, and two will be off their plans within six months of signup. One is a woman recently divorced who found a job in July and was covered by her employer as of August 1; another is entering a graduate program that provides free (or at least premium-free) health insurance, effective Sept. 1. A third is switching from a high-deductible ACA plan to insurance provided by his wife's employer. Another qualified for Medicaid, then found a job (without insurance) in June, notified the authorities and was allowed to remain on Medicaid for a year, dated from the point when he reported change of status. If his income doesn't change, he'll qualify for a subsidized private plan with Cost Sharing Reduction when his Medicaid eligibility ends.
