It took a few days for this bombshell to sink in for me, but PreferredOne, the administrator of the cheapest health plan in the country, and also the most popular Minnesota MNSure Exchange plan with 58% of the total market share alone, has decided to completely abandon the state exchange market in 2015.
I am one of the people who bought the Silver PreferredOne plan, officially the cheapest health insurance plan in the country to be offered on any exchange when cost-sharing subsidies are factored in. My monthly premium is just shy of $121.00 per month. That's the retail price tag, not the subsidized cost. It's so low it doesn't qualify for government subsidy to offset the monthly cost. My deductible is $2,700. Like many (most?) of the people who rushed the state exchange, I had been excluded from the health insurance market and my own parents' insurance plan due to "pre-existing conditions" that made me uninsurable.
Minnesota's stopgap measure for people like me prior to the ACA was a plan that still wouldn't cover any treatment related to my "pre-existing conditions," and because of this I have been putting off seeing a specialist for diagnostic testing for over five years. This year I was about to start seeing the specialist to resume testing for a rare and serious chronic disease that is thought to be linked to a mutated gene. I had paid off my deductible and I qualified for cost-sharing subsidies (meaning that my copays and co-insurance we reduced to nothing), so this treatment would cost me no money out of pocket. Then I received this news and realized the next few months could be the only window of time this testing may be financially possible for me. I am scheduling a lot of appointments.
Please continue below the fold for more cost analysis and to see how Republican politicians are taking the opportunity to be downright exuberant about this news.
I had thought my insurance plan was too good to be true. Turns out it was. PreferredOne managed to explode in market share during 2014, but this was not matched by enough revenue to create a profit margin that was worth it to PreferredOne. Of course this year, and the next few years, involve many people such as myself playing catch-up because we finally have access to the care we desperately need without having to declare bankruptcy over it. PreferredOne apparently did not account for this obvious and predictable trend. Now rumors are swirling that our exchange plan prices will increase by 10-15% in 2015.
Local Republican politicians are gleefully pointing to the death of MNSure, however because the price was so low to begin with, it's not as though the increase will put us at the top of the heap in terms of average cost. And there will still be plans offered by four other insurance companies on the exchange. Still, it's a difference that will matter to a lot of people, including me. I don't qualify for Medicaid or even the tier above that unique to Minnesota, called MinnesotaCare. That doesn't mean I have disposable income to throw around. This difference will eat into money I could be saving for retirement, or for a car when mine eventually dies. Money that I would be able to use to pay off my deductible next year more quickly.
The incredibly helpful responses of several Republicans were noted by local news outlet KSTP, including this little gem of positivity:
"MNsure is such a debacle that PreferredOne is now pulling out for 'financial and administrative reasons,'" Chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota Keith Downey said. "This tells Minnesotans what they already know, MNsure is a failure."
Republican Senate Candidate and Al Franken challenger Mike McFadden had this insightful
comment:
PreferredOne's departure from MNsure will drive up premiums and is a further illustration of the futility of having the federal government run health care, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden said Wednesday.
At a news conference the day after MNsure's largest and lowest-cost private-plan insurer announced it would not be back in 2015, McFadden said he wants a "state-based, market-based, patient-centered" system in which states could implement exchanges if they wanted and consumers could shop across state lines for coverage. "That will drive down costs. That's how markets work."
Bolding is mine, to point out that what this genius is describing is... MNSure. Original, Mike. Or were you thinking we should go back to the likes of MCHA, which for
my demographic (PDF link) in 2014 offered a $3,000 deductible plan for $209.15, a full $75.11 more expensive per month than my current premium, with no cost control guaranteed in the future? How would that be better? I mean for humans, not your corporate buddies. Even the next most expensive plan on the MNSure exchange with a $2,750 deductible is only $132.87 per month. It is also worth noting that MCHA has never had to implement additional funding required for coverage of pre-existing conditions and the other coverage mandated by the ACA beyond 2014, which would undoubtedly include a premium hike for consumers. No, MCHA is defunct as of January 1, 2015 because it has been replaced by a better, less expensive system that passes lower costs onto consumers instead of CEO bonuses, a once rampant practice that was only curtailed by the implementation of the ACA.
And as for shopping across state lines? Minnesota has some of the most competitively priced insurance plans in the country, even without the PreferredOne plans. Why does McFadden think we would want to shop for coverage in states where health insurance plans are more expensive?
I'm not even going to touch the fact that private multi-state markets did not, in fact drive down costs because that is evident to anyone with an attention span longer than that of a goldfish, and another reason the ACA exists in the first place.
It would be great if our state's Republican politicians would stop wishing for the ACA to fail (and for my healthcare opportunities to fail along with it). Thanks so much for helping me out, guys. Over 30,000 people are in this bind and all you have to offer is a smug "We told you it would fail!"
No plan to address the needs of these thousands of people. No compassion over our predicament. This needs to stay in everyone's minds heading into the November elections.
You can bet additional money will be spent here to obfuscate what is happening and the Kochs hate Al Franken with the fire of a thousand burning suns for helping with the effort to repeal Citizens' United. I don't know what I will do if we lose him and have to deal with Mike McFadden instead. At least Al can manage to calculate basic cost comparisons.