Health Plan Weekly

Uninsured rates among Black, Latino, Asian and Native American communities plummeted from 2010 to 2022, as more people gained health care coverage through federal health care programs and employer-sponsored plans, according to reports released by HHS.

The uninsured rate for Black Americans under age 65 dropped from 20.9% to 10.8% between 2010 and 2022, and the rate dropped from 32.7% to 18.0% for Latino Americans during that time. Meanwhile, the uninsured rate went from 16.6% to 6.2% for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI), and from 32.4% to 19.9% for American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN).

The Illinois legislature recently passed several health insurance reform regulations, most notably banning step therapy for covered services, prohibiting prior authorization for inpatient mental health services and eliminating short-term health plans. Health policy experts tell AIS Health, a division of MMIT, that the Healthcare Protection Act (HPA) goes further than other state laws by banning step therapy outright — a move other states could opt to follow. 

Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who proposed the HPA in his fiscal year 2025 budget address in February, is soon expected to sign the act into law. It will apply to Medicaid, Affordable Care Act exchange, fully insured employer sponsored and state employee health plans, but it will exclude self-insured and Medicare plans that are regulated at the federal level. 

Although UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty caused a brief health insurer stock selloff with his remarks about a Medicaid “disturbance,” both his company and other managed care powerhouses have since been busy trying to reassure jittery investors.  

The trouble started on May 29, when Witty was answering questions from analyst Lance Wilkes during the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference. Witty pointed out that “there’s probably going to be some disturbance around” syncing Medicaid managed care payment rates with the heightened costs associated with covering Medicaid enrollees, now that millions of people have been dropped from the rolls during the “unwinding” process.  

Although overall customer satisfaction rankings improved year over year in the J.D. Power 2024 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study, nearly all evaluated health plans struggled to provide a high-quality digital customer experience. Indeed, one perennially high-performing plan admits that it, too, has been striving to solve the digital-experience puzzle — but it hopes that a new affiliation agreement will help by adding much-needed scale and access to capital. 

This year’s J.D. Power survey measured satisfaction among 29,188 members of 147 group and individual health plans in 22 regions throughout the U.S. from January to April 2024. Plans are scored based on performance in eight core dimensions: “able to get health services how/when I want,” “digital channels,” “ease of doing business," “helps save time and money,” “people,” “product/coverage offerings,” “resolving problems or complaints” and “trust.”