Health Plan Weekly

  • Experts Call on Congress To Boost Medicaid Funding

    Democratic majorities in Congress and the Biden administration can move quickly to bolster Medicaid and expand enrollment in the safety net program, according to a Feb. 3 expert panel convened by the Brookings Institution. The panelists, which included policy experts, state health officials, and former CMS Deputy Administrator Vikki Wachino, observed that Medicaid can play a critical role in blunting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color and preserving states’ finances.

    Medicaid’s safety-net role is more important than ever during the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic’s economic devastation has caused sudden, unprecedented growth in Medicaid enrollment — up 8.6% to a total of 77.3 million nationally between February 2020 and September 2020, according to a Jan. 21 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation — as well as losses in commercial insurance coverage.

  • Nearly 9 Million People Could Benefit From Broadened ACA Enrollment Period

    by Jinghong Chen

    President Joe Biden on Jan. 28 signed an executive order to reopen the federal health exchange from Feb.15 through May 15. During that special enrollment period, 4 million uninsured people will be eligible for a zero-premium bronze plan on HealthCare.gov, and another 4.9 million could get subsidies to cover part of a health plan, according to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Compared to the general non-elderly population, these subsidy-eligible uninsured individuals are more likely to be young adults, high-school educated and working in industries such as construction, arts, entertainment and recreation. Approximately 8.3 million people selected or were automatically reenrolled in health plans for 2021 on HealthCare.gov as of the Dec. 15 deadline, according to CMS.

  • Cigna, Humana See COVID Costs Creep Up in Fourth Quarter

    Although the COVID-19 pandemic has had a largely positive impact on health insurers’ bottom lines — given the sheer magnitude of deferred routine and elective care — two publicly traded payers’ recent fourth-quarter earnings results show that they are not immune from the myriad costs associated with the case surge that occurred in the fall and winter of 2020.

    Cigna Corp., which reported its fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 financial results on Feb. 4, posted an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $3.51, missing the consensus Wall Street estimate of $3.68 because of “higher COVID cost in the quarter,” as Citi analyst Ralph Giacobbe put it. Most of that pressure was felt in the company’s U.S. Medical segment — which houses its commercial and government-sponsored insurance businesses — as fourth-quarter adjusted income from operations and adjusted margins both declined year over year due to COVID-19 and the one year-return of the health insurance fee.

  • MCO Stock Performance, January 2021

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  • With New Order, Biden Alludes to Array of ACA Rule Changes

    Late last month, President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) that made headlines chiefly because it reopened the federal health insurance exchange and signaled that the end is near for controversial Trump-era Medicaid policies like work requirements. Yet the language in the order also indicates that Biden is directing federal regulators to make a host of revisions to the rules governing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges, which the Trump administration generally sought to loosen.

    In his order, Biden tells federal agency leaders to review all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents and policies to determine if those actions violate the administration’s goal to “protect and strengthen Medicaid and the ACA and to make high-quality healthcare accessible and affordable for every American.” Per the order, that includes:

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