Insurers gather to analyze exchange wins and worries
In the midst of a tumultuous year of reform in their industry, health insurance leaders will gather in Seattle on Wednesday to trade war stories and perhaps learn something useful.
The public insurance exchanges—and lessons from the first Obamacare open enrollment—will be a major focus of discussions at the three-day conference hosted by America’s Health Insurance Plans. The opening day agenda will feature a forum with state exchange officials from Kentucky, Minnesota and Washington state, who experienced sharply varied levels of success with their programs.
Insurers will talk about how the individual-market customer base compared to actuarial expectations and what they anticipate in pricing and competition for 2015. They’ll likely be fretting about back-end information technology problems on the federal exchange that raise doubts about whether insurers will receive timely and accurate premium subsidy payments from the government. A large percentage of insurers’ anticipated revenue from exchange customers depends on those federal payments. “You’re not going to hear a lot about that from the podium, but you are going hear a lot about it in the hallways,” said Jeff Goldsmith, president of the Charlottesville, Va.-based consulting firm Health Futures. “There’s a lot of faith-based funding of exchange premiums going on right now.”
The agenda also includes panels on the skyrocketing cost of specialty drugs. AHIP and big pharma have been going toe to toe for months on the issue. Expect AHIP President and CEO Karen Ignagni to again raise the specter of government price controls on drugs.