Payment Due: The Obamacare Deadline No One is Talking About

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/payment-due-obamacare-deadline-no-one-talking-about-1386861174

“There is also a lot of worrying going on over people making payments,” industry consultant Robert Laszewski wrote in an email. “One client reports only 15% have paid so far. It is still too early to know for sure what this means, but we should expect some enrollment slippage come the payment due date.”

Another consultant Kip Piper, agreed. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5% and 10% of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” he wrote me.

“It naturally varies by insurer and will hopefully increase as we get close to end of December and documents flow in the mail,” added Piper, a former official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “But overall I’m hearing it’s a small portion so far. And that, of course, is a fraction of an already comparatively small number of people who have made it through setting up an account, getting verified, subsidy eligibility determined, plan selected, complete and correct data transferred to the insurer, and insurer set out the confirmation with invoice for consumer’s share of the first month’s premium.”

<snip>

One additional point to keep an eye on: If consumers pay their first month’s premium but then stop paying, insurers cannot drop them from their plans for 90 days.

“Under the rule interpreting the law, insurers offering plans on the exchanges must provide a three-month grace period to individuals who have enrolled and who have stopped paying their premiums. In the first 30 days, the insurer must continue to pay incurred claims. But for subscribers who ultimately fail to pay premiums within the 90 days and whose coverage is terminated, payers are not required to pay for claims incurred during the last 60 days of the 90-day period,” Modern Healthcare reported in August.

Healthcare providers are nervous that they will be on the hook for services delivered to patients who haven’t paid their premiums.

[postulater]

1. The doctors will be screwed anyway.

The deductibles are so high that without a hospital or ER visit the clinic will be having to collect for the first few thousand anyway.

So premium non-payment will be the least of the clinic's worries.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

7. Even if people DO pay the Right will claim it's a failure because it's not making Obama rich.

[Control-Z]

2. This is a valid concern for me.

I haven't yet signed up, but I have looked at plans and premiums. We stand to save anywhere from $200.00 to almost $700.00 per month compared to what we've been paying.

So I am waiting for my future ex to decide on a plan. Pay next to nothing (compared to our current premium) for more benefits than we've ever had with private insurance? Or pay more and get a boatload of coverage?

I'm not sure how, or when, we will be required to pay. And I don't know anything about canceling our existing policy. I don't want our payments to overlap. On the other hand, I don't want to create a lapse in coverage.

I'm confident that I will get the answers when I officially sign up - if I could just get the man to decide on a plan.

[eridani]

3. I think that most people will certainly try to pay

But what if they get hit with one or more financial emergencies and can't?

[riversedge]

4. umm.. Time to take care of yourself.

[Lochloosa]

10. ...

[Fridays Child]

5. Compliance in signing up for ACA plans + Noncompliance with payment agreements.

Will this drive popular support for single payer health care?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. The media keeps harping about the insurance exchanges as if THAT is "Obamacare"....

The percentage of people going to them is really not that high compared to the number of people suddenly eligible for the Medicaid expansion. The media also acts like employers are no longer offering medical to their employees. As if EVERYONE IN AMERICA is going to have to sign up and if they don't then "Obamacare" will be a complete flop.

They KNOW that's not the case but the AGENDA is to misinform the public, declare it a "failure" and cheer on the Republicans.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

14. When was the ACA ever billed as a Medicaid expansion?

The idea was always to get everyone into the same cost pool through private insurance. If anything Medicaid expansion was underplayed.

Perhaps the idea was never to get "EVERYONE IN AMERICA" insured through the exchanges but all policies are now subject to HHS regulation and if you want private insurance you are subject to the same rules that govern the web-based markets.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

15. The ACA was about ending the abuses of the insurance industry....

PART of that was making them compete with something that wasn't in the game to swim in money.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

16. Well, then it failed in that respect.

The ACA is structured and has slush funds to prop-up insurance corporation profits.

Yes, it's fascism, but at least it's compassionate fascism -- I suppose.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. The main thing the ACA did was open the debate on the duty of government....

There are those who claim government has ZERO responsibility to it's citizens. These are the types that couldn't understand the concept of evacuation, housing and feeding of the citizens of New Orleans FOR FREE. Every other country in the world does that if a deadly storm is coming in.

Republicans are the type that wouldn't want the government to care for the burn victims of a nuclear attack.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

19. So the goalposts have gone from

1. expanding Medicaid to

2. ratcheting down on corrupt insurance companies to

3. starting a public debate which -- by your initial comment in this thread -- we're said to be losing.

How gloomy.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. We're not "losing" with the public....

Unlike the Right Wing, they actually consider giving a shit to be a virtue.

[Demit]

8. "The deadline varies somewhat by state and by insurer."

I clicked through to the article b/c my natural question was Why aren't people paying? Are they ignoring invoices from their insurers? The only answer I could see was that deadlines vary, NOT that deadlines have passed, or that people are ignoring deadlines. Also, that insurers are still in the process of completing people's paperwork, so presumably that means they haven't yet invoiced enrollees.

So this strikes me as a scare article. Insurers are hollering before they're hurt. I don't pay before I get an invoice, and I don't pay invoices until the due date. Am I missing something here?

[eridani]

9. People aren't understanding that they have to pay now to get covered on 1/1/2014 n/t

[Demit]

11. Were they sent invoices?

What tells you you need to pay "now" when you buy something? The business you're buying it from, right? The business tells you the amount you owe them and when they want the money, right?

The article does not say whether or not people are being sent invoices or due dates.

[PasadenaTrudy]

12. Ours is due

Dec 21st. We have the invoice and plan to pay it online today or tomorrow.

[Demit]

13. Thank you. You seem to understand what the OP doesn't.

And I appreciate your letting me know that usual business practices apply with the ACA, that there are invoices (with due dates) being sent.

[freedom fighter jh]

17. "It's a small portion so far."

That might be expectable, even if most people want to pay and are going to pay.

I started trying to enroll back around the second week of October. I thought I was starting late because I kept hearing about people having gone through the whole process already. It took about 2 months -- until early last week -- for me to get my application through and see what my options are. If I had started the application process yesterday, I probably could have gone through the whole thing in 2 hours. But I started when it was not working. I kept going at it when it was supposedly fixed, and errors in my application that were supposed to have been fixed kept coming back. I believe it really did get fixed about 2 weeks ago.

Then it took me 9 days to sift through my options and decide what will work best for me. I hit the "enroll" button late last night. There is no way for me to pay till I hear from the provider. It's out of my hands.

I imagine that there are lots of people in the same position: Whether they started at the earliest possible moment in October or close to the coming December 23 deadline, most probably made no real progress until recently; after that they have to wait for the provider to respond. So payment by a small fraction at this point probably doesn't mean much.

[TeamPooka]

21. People rushed to buy this insurance because they want it. They will pay the bills when

they are actually due, like all their other bills.