An additional 10,000 people applied for coverage under Arkansas’ expanded Medicaid program last week, and more than 5,600 people were determined eligible for coverage, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Arkansas Insurance Department Deputy Commissioner Cynthia Crone said 16,050 people who did not qualify for Medicaid had signed up as of Sunday for plans on Arkansas’ health-insurance exchange, up from 12,763 as of Dec. 28.
Cal Kellogg, executive vice president and chief strategy officer with Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, said enrollment in plans offered on the exchange by his company and its national affiliate, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, totaled about 15,000 as of earlier this week among those who do not qualify for Medicaid.
About 250 people a day are signing up for the non-Medicaid plans, he said.
“Currently, the enrollment is still skewed to older people, it’s still skewed female, so that creates some potential issues if the pool stays predominately older and women of childbearing ages,” Kellogg said.
The state’s insurance exchange, set up under the health-care overhaul law, allows people to shop for coverage on a federal website, healthcare.gov, and apply for tax-credit subsidies, as well as assistance under the state’s expanded Medicaid program.
The expansion, approved by the Legislature last year, extended eligibility to adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level - $15,860 for an individual or $32,500 for a family of four.
Most of the estimated 250,000 people who are eligible are expected to be able to sign up for a private plan on the exchange and have the premium paid by Medicaid under the so-called private option.
About 10 percent are expected to be assigned to the traditional Medicaid program because they are considered to have exceptional health needs.
The tax credit subsidies are available to people who do not qualify for Medicaid and have incomes of less than 400 percent of the poverty level - $45,960 for an individual or $94,200 for a family of four.
As of Sunday, a total of 87,963 people had been enrolled for coverage under the expanded Medicaid program, an increase of 2,654 from six days earlier, Human Services Department spokesman Kate Luck said.
The total included 79,182 who were signed up for Medicaid-funded private plans and 8,781 people who were assigned to the traditional Medicaid program.
In addition, more than 10,000 applicants as of Saturday had been determined eligible for Medicaid coverage but had not completed the enrollment process.
Including those who have enrolled, 139,564 people have applied for coverage under the expanded Medicaid program, Luck said.
“We’ve seen the increase in applications each week, and now we’ve got about 10,000 each week,” Luck said. “I think that continues to show that word is getting out across the state about the program, and people are starting to take action and get signed up.”
She said she did not have information on how many of the applicants have been determined ineligible and how many are awaiting a determination on their eligibility.
Both Luck and Kellogg said they do not have information on how many people enrolling in coverage in Medicaid or plans on the insurance exchange previously had coverage from another source.
St. Louis-based Centene Corp.’s Celtic Insurance Co., which had policies covering 288 people in the individual market at the end of 2012, and Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Inc.’s Coventry Health Care, which covered 41 people, notified the Insurance Department last year that they would terminate their customers’ policies by the end of this year and offer them replacement policies that meet the healthcare law’s requirements.
In addition, Bedford Park, Ill.-based United Security Life and Health Insurance Co., which covered 275 people at the end of 2012, notified its customers in late September that it is leaving the Arkansas market and terminating its plans in the state as of March 31, 2014.
In addition, on Dec. 31, the state ended the Medicaid-funded ARHealthNetworks, which provided limited health benefits to almost 20,000 people, and a program that covered about 2,400 people with medical conditions that had prevented them from being able to buy coverage in the private market.
The four insurance companies offering plans on Arkansas’ exchange are required to group people enrolled in the private Medicaid plans and those who enroll in non-Medicaid plans on the exchange in the same risk pool, meaning their medical expenses are used to calculate premiums for future years.
Each company’s risk pool also includes people who enroll in unsubsidized plans outside of the exchange.
Kellogg said about 3,000 people have enrolled outside the exchange in unsubsidized Blue Cross plans.
Kellogg added that, of the 6,100 people who signed up for Blue Cross plans on the exchange in time for coverage to take effect Jan. 1, about 95 percent have paid their first month’s premium.
Because of software glitches and other problems with healthcare.gov, the company gave enrollees until Friday to pay the premium for coverage with a Jan. 1 effective date.
Insurance company representatives have said that enrolling young people, particularly young men, is important to keep premiums from rising in future years. That’s because older people tend to have more medical expenses, but the federal health-care law limits how much more insurance companies can charge them in premiums to account for that difference.
Similarly, the health-care law prohibits companies from charging women more than men, even though young women tend to have more medical expenses than young men.
Figures released by the Human Services Department earlier this month showed that those enrolling in the Medicaid-funded plans tend to be younger than others signing up for coverage through the insurance exchange, although women outnumber men among the enrollees.
Kellogg blamed low enrollment in the non-Medicaid plans on problems with healthcare.gov that prevented many people from being able to enroll during October and November, the first two months of the initial six month enrollment period.
Now that the website is working better, he said, enrollment has picked up. He said he said he expects enrollment to pick up as the March 31 deadline to sign up for coverage starting in 2014 approaches.
“We may see a surge of activity toward the end,” Kellogg said.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/30/2014