Comments on: Rising Individual Market Premiums: Two Competing Narratives http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2010/03/12/rising-individual-market-premiums-two-competing-narratives/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rising-individual-market-premiums-two-competing-narratives The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere Fri, 24 May 2013 20:22:41 +0000 hourly 1 By: The 9 Lies and 1 Truth in Obama’s Speech Following Supreme Court Decision on Obamacare | Mama Bird's Blog http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2010/03/12/rising-individual-market-premiums-two-competing-narratives/comment-page-1/#comment-206048 The 9 Lies and 1 Truth in Obama’s Speech Following Supreme Court Decision on Obamacare | Mama Bird's Blog Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:51:14 +0000 http://healthaffairs.org/blog/?p=4173#comment-206048 [...] seen many of my self-employed friends report they can no longer afford their insurance premiums. Insurance companies are passing the cost of adding millions more people to their rolls onto us. Did anyone really think they were going to pay for [...]

]]> By: jeff lemieux http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2010/03/12/rising-individual-market-premiums-two-competing-narratives/comment-page-1/#comment-32903 jeff lemieux Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:47:00 +0000 http://healthaffairs.org/blog/?p=4173#comment-32903 In my opinion, the March 2009 CPS did not capture the full impact of the recession on health insurance coverage. People may drop health insurance coverage with a lag after an economic downturn as their savings are gradually depleted. For example, the number of non-elderly persons with individual coverage was recorded at 16.7 million in the March CPS (ostensibly for 2008), down only slightly from 17.1 million in 2007 (from the March 2008 CPS). Moreover, some newly laid-off workers may have purchased a short-term individual policy for a while. It is only after the recession has persisted and households’ finances are further strained that decreases in voluntary health insurance enrollment may accelerate. This may not have occured until later in 2009, after the March CPS was done. Also, we should note that the number of non-elderly persons with individual coverage has been estimated to have been very stable between 16.0 and 17.3 million in the March CPS data since 1994, and the change from 2007 to 2008 may have been more of a statistical blip than a robust signal. Finally, for many reasons, the CPS is not a precise instrument for measuring health coverage in the first place. (For the figures above I used EBRI’s tabulations of the March CPS by Paul Fronstin, which are available at http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/EBRI_IB_9-2009_No334_HI-Cvg.pdf .)

If the full extent of the recession is not captured, then it would be premature to assume that data from the March 2009 CPS indicate that the recession has had little impact on risk pools in 2010. Also, it is notable that the average age of individual market enrollees in California in your table did increase by about 0.6 years from the 2007 CPS to the 2009 CPS. That would get an actuary’s attention in itself.

-Jeff Lemieux, AHIP Research

]]> By: uberVU - social comments http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2010/03/12/rising-individual-market-premiums-two-competing-narratives/comment-page-1/#comment-32884 uberVU - social comments Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:01:15 +0000 http://healthaffairs.org/blog/?p=4173#comment-32884 Social comments and analytics for this post…

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