STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 13 November 2013

[Demeter]

2. Maybe ought to add this to the resource links

Michael Olenick: Comprehensive Review of ObamaCare Plans Reveals Not Only High Cost for Atrocious Coverage, but Also Apparent Violations of ACA Requirements


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/michael-olenick-comprehensive-review-of-obamacare-plans-reveals-not-only-high-cost-for-atrocious-coverage-but-also-apparent-violations-of-aca-requirements.html

Yves here. From what Lambert and I can tell, Michael Olenick is the first to publish any sort of comprehensive analysis of Obamacare plans. And when you read his piece, you will see why were are likely to continue to be subjected to barrages of cherry-picked anecdotes in lieu of analysis.

His three-person family in his Florida zip code has 132 plans available to them. As he describes, the one mechanism that Obamacare stipulated to simplify the shopping task a bit, that of showing what the each plan would pay out under two specific treatment situations, was not disclosed for the overwhelming majority of plans on the healthcare.gov site. That meant that Olenick had to find the the information elsewhere and input it into his comparison.

But the most stunning part is the degree to which the plans fall short of their stipulated “actuarial” payouts. At least for Olenick’s family, the plans fall well short of the mandated level of reimbursements (for instance, a bronze plan is touted as covering 60% of expected medical costs). It’s unlikely that Olenick’s family would produce results that are out of line with results for states with similar regulations (note that some states have additional requirements that will influence plan structure and pricing).

It is finally important to recognize that the overwhelming majority of reporters and commentators have not been gone the route Olenick has, of obtaining actual detailed plan data for a particular family or individual. Instead, for the most part, they have relied on a dataset provided by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for every health care plan in the Federal marketplace. It has the appearance of being comprehensive, as Charles Ornstein tells us in his post “Not a good price calculator“(hat tip Lambert):

MUCH, MUCH MORE