Problems with the HealthCare.gov federal exchange plan enrollment system carry a bigger risk than frequent crashes: Higher prices could follow for many Americans if technical troubles scare off young people.
The government has touted recent improvements to HeathCare.gov, which millions of Americans are expected to use to sign up for coverage.
But enrollment still lags far behind projections, and that has triggered worries that legions of potential customers in their 20s and 30s might not sign up. If that happens — and older, sicker people continue to register in larger numbers — insurers might have to raise future prices to address the imbalance.
Although the chance of an age imbalance has loomed since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) became law in 2009, it has become more worrisome since the website made its glitch-plagued debut in October.
Aetna Chairman Mark Bertolini said then that it was “incredibly important” to get the site running properly because “younger, healthier people aren’t going to give them more than one shot.”
Americans have until Monday to sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1, and many are expected to wait until the last minute. They have until March 31 to find coverage and avoid a penalty for being uninsured next year.
Insurers need younger, healthier people to essentially subsidize the coverage they give older customers due to limits placed on the insurers by PPACA. Americans in their 60s generally use about $5 in health care for every $1 used by those in their 20s, but PPACA limits insurers to collecting $3 in premiums from that 60-year-old for every $1 they collect from a 20-something.
On average, that means an older customer’s premiums won’t fully cover their medical expenses, while the opposite happens for younger customers.
Insurers factored that in when they began planning for the overhaul. They set rates based in part on the number of customers they expected to enroll who were above and below age 45. Even a small shift in the balance between those two groups can hurt an insurer if it comes after the company has set prices.
For every 10 percent decline in the younger population, an insurer’s cost for care could rise by 1 percent, said Dave Axene, a fellow of the Society of Actuaries who helped insurers set prices for the overhaul’s insurance exchanges in several states. If the older population also winds up bigger than expected, then costs could rise even more, depending on how other variables play out.
“Just a little shift in this … all of a sudden you’re caught with a serious problem,” Axene said, noting the hikes will eat away at profitability, and many insurers were only expecting profit margins of 2 to 4 percent from business they get on the exchanges.