By Grace-Marie Turner & Doug Badger —
A few states have found a key to undoing some of Obamacare’s damage to their individual health insurance markets by redirecting some federal funding to help sick people. These states are providing separate assistance to those with the highest health costs, thereby reducing premiums and increasing enrollment for healthy people driven out of the market by soaring costs.
In a new paper published by The Heritage Foundation, scholars Doug Badger and Ed Haislmaier detail how several states have successfully used Obamacare’s Section 1332 waiver authority to begin to revive their non-group health insurance markets with better risk-mitigation strategies.
They explain in State Innovation: The Key to Affordable Health Insurance Choices that Obamacare’s rigid and centralized federal regulation of the nongroup market has driven premiums up, choices down, and forced millions of people out of the individual health insurance market.
Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act permits states to seek waivers from certain federal health insurance requirements if they believe they can do a better job as long as their program doesn’t cost the federal government more money. But the rules the Obama administration subsequently issued were so strict that they make it very difficult for states to get approval for the broader innovative reform proposals envisioned by the provision’s authors.
Alaska, Minnesota, and Oregon have received waivers from the Trump administration for targeted reform initiatives that have been successful in lowering premiums for individual health insurance by separately subsidizing those with the highest health costs. And the lower premiums also mean increased enrollment.
According to the paper:
“Alaska was the first state to obtain a section 1332 waiver to implement this type of approach. The state sought a waiver of Obamacare’s “single-risk-pool” requirement, under which people who are likely to file large medical claims must be pooled with those who might never see a doctor. This Obamacare mandate had touched off a vicious cycle, in which insurers charge ever higher premiums, repelling the healthiest customers but not the sickest, resulting in premiums that are increasingly affordable only to those who receive federal subsidies.
“Alaska instead proposed to move customers with one of 33 medical conditions into a separate pool. Their medical claims would be funded in part by a portion of federal premium-subsidy payments diverted to the pool. Non-federal funding sources include ceded premiums (meaning, in the case of an enrollee whose claims costs the insurer transfers to the pool, the insurer must also transfer to the pool some portion of the premium it received from that enrollee), state assessments on insurers, and state general fund contributions. Based on an actuarial analysis commissioned by Alaska in support of its waiver application, the state concluded that it would reduce premiums and increase enrollment in the individual market at no additional cost to the federal government.”
The analysis was correct. After the waiver reform in Alaska, premiums for the lowest-cost Bronze plans fell by 39 percent in 2018.
Oregon showed similar results in 2018, with premiums for the lowest-cost Bronze plans falling by 5 percent. Premiums for the highest-cost Bronze plans plunged by 20 percent. In Minnesota, the third state with an approved waiver, premiums dropped in both 2018 and 2019. Average premium for Obamacare coverage in 2019 will be lower for every Minnesota insurer than they were in 2017.
Four other states have had waivers approved for 2019: Maryland, Maine, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Insurers in Maryland had sought 2019 premium increases averaging over 30 percent. Insurers filed those rate requests before the federal government approved Maryland’s waiver application. After receiving approval, Maryland announced that 2019 rates would drop by more than 13 percent. Instead of a 30 percent premium hike, Maryland consumers will pay 13 percent less, on average, than they did in 2018.
Enrollment in the individual health insurance markets is falling at an alarming rate. According to a study published by the Kaiser Family on “Changes in Enrollment in the Individual Health Insurance Market,” there were 17.4 million policyholders in the individual market in 2015, dropping to 14.4 million by the first quarter of 2018.
Clearly a solution is needed to reverse this trend. Waivers alone, however, are not enough. Congress should enact legislation to empower states to establish consumer-centered approaches that reduce health care costs and increase choices with the Health Care Choices proposal.
The proposal would rely on states to devise even more creative ways to provide help for the sick as well as those needing assistance in purchasing health coverage. The Health Care Choices plan would repeal Obamacare’s federal entitlements to premium assistance and Medicaid expansion and replace them with formula grants to the states to set up consumer-centered programs.
Instead of asking Washington’s permission for some limited flexibility, states would use federal resources to finance approaches that best serve the needs of their residents. The limited experience of redirecting funds toward risk mitigation shows that states can and should be leading on health reform.
