Individual health plan enrollment jumped by more than 26 percent and nearly 25 percent, respectively, in the first and second quarters of this year, the result of the federally mandated health exchanges, according to an analysis by SNL Financial.
While that’s not altogether shocking, there are some “caveats,” SNL says:
“These amounts reflect only the data reported by health insurers — therefore, life insurers are not included. The total individual plan enrollment is also a combination of two different data sources. The first is from the NAIC, where health insurers report enrollment in the Exhibit of Premiums, Enrollment and Utilization section of quarterly statutory statements. The second is specific to California filers. Some companies within that state report to the California Department of Managed Health Care. SNL tallied the relevant amounts from these filings and added that to the NAIC data to arrive at a total figure.”
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But other sets of data support the trend, including figures from the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the CDC.
“Based on a survey from January to March, the percentage of individuals that were uninsured at the time of interview was only 13.1 percent, down from 14.4 percent in 2013. Similar trends emerged across different age bands. Those within the 19-to-25 group fell to 20.9% from 26.5%, which is no doubt a closely watched metric for the current administration in light of the reported difficulty in signing up the “young invincibles.”
Not surprisingly, the biggest insurers on the individual market have seen significant jumps in the number of enrollees. Aetna, for example, reported an 87.6 percent jump in the second quarter, with a good deal of that coming through subsidiary Coventry Health Care of Florida. Coventry did not report any individual members at the end of 2013, but at the end of the first quarter this year, it reported 84,323 members and 247,231 at the end of the second quarter. It’s not obvious that all of that is attributable to the exchange, but Coventry did indeed sell 32 different types of plans through the Florida exchange.
Another Florida underwriter, GuideWell Mutual Holding Corp., saw growth of 26 percent in both the first and second quarters. GuideWell includes Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida.
While it may seem like a boon to carriers with the additional premium dollars, it’s not clear if exchange enrollees will remain with one carrier over the next as policies need to be renewed, according to SNL.
