Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Study Finds Only A Third Of Insurers Made Money On Marketplace Plans In 2014
Only about one-third of health insurers came out ahead in their first year in the ObamaCare marketplace, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund released Wednesday. While insurers made nearly twice as much money from healthcare premiums in 2014, overall profits 鈥渄iminished noticeably鈥 because of higher payouts, according to the expansive new analysis on companies participating in the exchanges. (Ferris, 7/20)
The report by the Commonwealth Fund also reveals that insurers who did the best selling Obamacare plans had average profits of only around 8.5 percent, while those who fared the worst financially had steep losses that averaged nearly 22 percent. The study further found that the medical costs faced by those insurers were only about 2 percent higher than what they had expected when they priced their plans, which went on sale in October 2013. (Mangan, 7/20)
When it comes to lowering health plan costs in the face of changes brought on by the ACA, hospitals have advantages that other employers don't. ... One way for hospitals to lower the costs of the benefits they offer is to make changes that incentivize employees to seek care in their own health systems. This can be done through lower copays or deductibles, [Peter Bresler, practice leader of Willis Towers Watson's health system consulting in Chicago] said. Hospitals also can form a 鈥渘arrow or high-performance network,鈥 which is a health plan offering a smaller choice of doctors and hospitals in exchange for lower fees, he said. (Knebel, 7/20)
A new report suggests that about 107,500 Minnesotans last year weren鈥檛 tapping federal tax credits to discount health insurance premiums, even though they qualified. In some cases, people eligible for subsidies might have simply skipped the tax credits, because the dollar value was small. But there also could be information gaps where people either didn鈥檛 realize they were eligible, or didn鈥檛 know where to go for subsidies, according to findings presented Wednesday during a MNsure board of directors meeting in St. Paul. (Snowbeck, 7/20)
