Insurers Predict Surge In Obamacare Sign-Ups

Reuters: Insurers Have Big Plans For 2015 Obamacare Enrollment
U.S. insurers planning to sell 2015 Obamacare health plans expect at least 20 percent growth in customers and in some states anticipate more than doubling sign-ups. In interviews with Reuters, half a dozen privately held and non-profit health insurers around the country say they are expecting this growth based on interest from potential customers they are hearing about through their call centers, sales forces and brokers. With the start of enrollment barely two weeks away, their assessment is dramatically different from a year ago, when it was unclear how many Americans would apply for the brand new insurance and income-based subsidies offered under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law. (Humer, 10/30)

Kaiser Health News: For Families With Mixed Immigration Status, Health Insurance Can Be Puzzling
Jessica Bravo walks house-to-house in the piercing Southern California heat. Over and over, at doorsteps around Orange County, she asks the same question: 'Are you insured?' Getting an answer isn’t always easy. Doors slam in her face. She gets shooed from porches. And sometimes people cut her off mid-spiel. Bravo is a paid health outreach worker for the Orange County Congregation Community Organization, a faith-based nonprofit. Her job is to inform people about getting health insurance under the nation’s landmark health law, the Affordable Care Act. (de Marco, 10/31)

Minnesota Public Radio: PoliGraph: MNsure Rate Hike Rhetoric Flies; Claims Inconclusive
When the Minnesota Department of Commerce announced rates would increase by 4.5 percent for 2015 open enrollment, they simply averaged the premium rate increase reported by each insurance company selling plans on the exchange. But that number focused only on how much more insurance companies are charging, a figure that is greater than the amount the many MNsure participants getting a subsidy will actually pay. (Richert and Catlin, 10/30)

Raleigh News & Observer/Charlotte Observer: Blue Cross Mistakenly Notifies 42,000 NC Customers Of Incorrect Rate Increases
Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the state’s largest health insurer, said Thursday that about 42,000 customers around the state received insurance renewal letters with incorrect rates, some showing cost increases of more than 100 percent. The Chapel Hill company has been flooded with calls since Wednesday from irate customers who began receiving their renewal notices this week. Blue Cross officials soon realized the insurance rates were incorrectly transferred from the company’s database to the computer-generated renewal notices. The affected customers are on grandfathered Blue Advantage Plan A policies with a $15 co-pay, and all 42,000 customers on that individual health plan were sent the wrong rates for 2015 renewals, said Blue Cross spokeswoman Michelle Douglas. Customers who signed up for those plans before the passage of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010 were allowed to keep them. (Murawski and Helms, 10/30)

Also, media outlets report on Medicaid expansion developments -

The Associated Press: McCrory Says He's Assessing NC Medicaid Expansion
Gov. Pat McCrory said Thursday he's weighing whether to expand Medicaid, the health insurance plan for the poor and disabled, adding to signs that state Republican leaders may reconsider their opposition to extending the social program. In addition to shaping a plan for networks of physicians and hospitals to share the risk of rising health care costs, "I'm also trying to figure out what to do with Medicaid and whether to expand that or not, because the feds are offering all this money and yet I've got to be concerned with the bureaucracy that could be grown because of that," McCrory told a gathering of corporate CEOs at a Raleigh country club. "I'm doing that assessment right now." (Dalesio, 10/30).

Alabama Media Group: Map: How Much Alabama Counties Lost In Revenue When Medicaid Wasn't Expanded
Jefferson County didn't get about $342 million. Montgomery County left $157 million on the table. Madison County missed out on about $75 million; and Baldwin County, about $26 million. That's the estimated amount of money those counties would have received this year for health care to the poor - Medicaid money - had the state agreed to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The state as a whole would have received $1.4 billion. (Oliver, 10/30)