Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Health Net: Claim Costs in Obamacare Are Twice What They Used to Be

Health Net gives an early look at the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) on individual major medical experience in a document filed with the California Department of Insurance. ... 
Extracting and adjusting historical individual market data in a way that would allow for apples-to-apples comparisons with the new, PPACA-compliant products would be difficult, Health Net said. "Also," Health Net said, "our individual claims costs for the first four months under PPACA are more than double what they were prior to PPACA."
In a new 2015 individual coverage rate filing, which was submitted Oct. 2, Health Net said it expects the extra health risk, or morbidity risk, resulting from the PPACA underwriting changes to increase costs greatly. The company said it once had a risk level below the state average, and will end up with a risk level above the state average. The morbidity shift will be enough to justify increasing individual costs 78.9 percent, the company said....