Home > posts > California’s ObamaCare Exchange Expands Coverage, But at What Cost?
March 19th, 2014 12:18 pm
California’s ObamaCare Exchange Expands Coverage, But at What Cost?

There is a lot of misreporting with ObamaCare numbers as the open enrollment period draws to a close March 31.

Consider these two examples from California.

First, Covered California – the state’s ObamaCare exchange – announced recently that more than 1 million people had applied for coverage and chosen an insurance plan. Liberal bloggers at the Daily Kos are cheering this news as a triumph. Before the enrollment period began last October, the state set as a goal 696,000 enrollments by the end of March. At 1,018,315 as of the end of last Saturday, ObamaCare supporters think they are 300,000 over their goal.

Except Covered California isn’t anywhere close. Look again at the goal and the announcement. California wants at least 696,000 people to be enrolled by the end of March. To date, they have over 1 million people who have applied to be enrolled. That’s not the same thing. In fact, in speaking recently to a source at Medi-Cal – the state’s Medicaid program – I was told that thousands of applications are in limbo across the state because computer systems at the state and county levels don’t talk to one another. This impacts Covered California’s numbers because many of the uninsured applying for insurance through the exchange qualify for the state’s expanded Medicaid program. To compensate for the technology failure, caseworkers are processing emergency requests by hand. So to recap, don’t be fooled by news about applications posing as enrollments.

The other example of misreporting is on the type of coverage most enrollees are choosing. The most popular plans also cost the least. That’s not surprising since ObamaCare requires people to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. On one hand, the increased number of policyholders does allow ObamaCare supporters to say the law is covering more people. But at what price? “[E]xperts worry plans with lower premiums could come with a different cost: Fewer doctors and hospitals could mean fewer choices and longer waits for care,” reports the San Jose Mercury-News.

Lower premiums also mean higher out-of-pocket costs. I’ve written previously about how reporting on lower-than-expected premiums ignores across-the-board spikes in deductibles. The IRS says that annual deductibles larger than $1,250 should be considered high. On California’s exchange, it’s common for the lowest priced plans to have deductibles in excess of $2,000 annually (and some as high as $4,500 or more).

When all the dust settles after March 31, it’s very likely that California won’t have hit its enrollment goal, and that of the enrollees it does have many will come to loathe the longer wait times and higher costs. Maybe then we’ll get more help from journalists in how ObamaCare insurance actually works. But probably not.

Comments are closed.