Last month, the Review-Journal published my letter to the editor arguing that the Obamacare cliff had yet to be seen. While only minor reductions had occurred in the initial enrollment on health-care exchanges at the start of the year compared to the previous, the Affordable Care Act gives a 90-day grace period if premiums are not paid. Many people are automatically re-enrolled at the start of the year, so I said we’d see the real data show up in April.
Lo and behold, NOTUS reported recently that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has an internal report that shows 21 percent of enrollees in the 30 states covered by the federal health-care exchange lost their coverage for not paying their first month’s premium. In the states that run their own exchanges, the drop was far less, in part because several of those states are backfilling lost subsidies with state funds. And even hospitals are now trying to figure out if they can pay the premiums for their patients who lost coverage, because it’s cheaper than losing all compensation for emergency care.
To be fair, this is about a 9 percent increase in dropped coverage compared to the previous year. But, in total, it represents about 3 million Americans who wanted health insurance, were signed up to get it, but can’t afford it.
