Myrick Benefits Solutions

12/14/2016

Tomorrow is the last day to enroll in a health plan and have your coverage begin January 1. Contact me if you have questions, need help enrolling, or want to know your options.

01/22/2016

Health Insurance Enrollment Update
Since Nov 1 when open enrollment began, 8.8 million have signed up for new coverage or had their existing coverage renewed through Healthcare.gov. Week 11 just ended Jan 16 and saw just under 400,000 plan selections. This is roughly the same number of plan selections during the same week last year.

With 400,000 plan selections, there were 560,000 applications for coverage submitted and over 700,000 "window shoppers" of people anonymously checking their subsidy estimates or the prices for health plans, but not completing an application.

Since the beginning of open enrollment, Florida leads the way with the highest cumulative total of plan selections at 1.6 million with Texas a close second.

As a reminder, these are the last two weeks for open enrollment, which ends Jan 31. Make sure you meet the deadline to get coverage for 2016! The penalty for not having coverage this year is 2.5% of income.

12/11/2015

We wanted to give an update heading into the final week of enrollment to secure coverage for January 1, 2016.

Over 800,000 people enrolled in a plan through healthcare.gov in this, the fifth week of Open Enrollment. That number is good enough for 37% of all enrolling consumers. That makes over 1 million new enrollments and 1.8 million returning consumers (63% of enrolling consumers) renewing their coverage. That's a total of 2.8 million since November 1.

Of the states who use healthcare.gov, Florida led the way with 598,279 enrolling followed by Texas with 317,094 signups.

As a reminder, coverage doesn't take effect until the first premium is paid so these enrollment numbers could change if consumers don't pay that first premium.

Let's put the numbers above in perspective. Last year, 2014, over 8 million people signed up for coverage. Of those, over 5 million went onto the rolls of Medicaid through the expansion of states Medicaid coverage. Connecticut was one of the states that voted to expand the criteria for Medicaid allowing more residents to qualify.

Finally, of the 5.5 million people who signed up for healthcare on healthcare.gov, only about 13% said they were previously uninsured.

10/15/2015

After receiving over $146 million, it's still the 5th exchange to fail

Obamacare once again shuttered with Kentucky Health Cooperative’s decision not to offer health insurance plans for 2016.

10/14/2015

Medicare Beneficiaries may experience an increase in their Part B premiums next year. For this year, Part B premiums are $104.90 unless a beneficiary is over the income threshold. Next year, roughly 30% of those on Medicare will see an increase of roughly $54/month for a total of $159.

This large increase is due to larger than expected Medicare costs in 2014 as well as a triggering of a federal "hold harmless" requirement. This requirement would prohibit the premium increase from applying to roughly 70% of beneficiaries. 70% of beneficiaries have their Medicare premiums deducted automatically from their Social Security checks. The requirement states that in years where there is no COLA adjustment to Social Security, there can be no Medicare premium increases. For 2016, there is not expected to be a COLA adjustment with Social Security.

So, roughly 30% of beneficiaries will foot this cost. That translates to roughly 16 million Medicare beneficiaries.

09/30/2015

Open Enrollment for individual health plans both on and off exchange begins November 1! Remember to review your coverage against the available options. Lastly, check the availability of tax subsidies to you. Tax subsidies are based on your adjusted gross income (AGI) and the number of people in your tax household. Contact us for questions and assistance.

06/09/2015

With insurers planning for 2016 and their requests for rate increases already in with the State Dept of Insurance, here's what you can expect.

Anthem 6.7% increase
Aetna 5.6% increase
Connecticare 5.2% increase
HealthyCT 14% increase
Golden Rule (United Healthcare individual plans off exchange) 18.5% increase
United Healthcare (individual plans on exchange) 12.4% increase

06/09/2015

As were halfway through another year with the Affordable Care Act, the question of the day is "have health costs decreased?" The answer is no, at least not completely. We will post the requested rate increases in out next post as insurers are planning for 2016 already. Pharmacy costs continue to be the subcategory with the largest increases. Individual pharmacy costs increased on average 11% while pharmacy costs in group or employer sponsored plans increased 30% on average.