Underinsured ACA Enrollees Strain Community Health Centers

Kaiser Health News, Daily Health Policy Report, September 26, 2014

Obamacare enrollees are straining the finances of community health centers around the country, some health center leaders say. The issue is that many lower-income patients with insurance coverage through the federal and state exchanges bought bronze-tier plans with lower premiums but high deductibles, coinsurance and copayments and no federal cost-sharing subsidies. When these patients face high out-of-pocket costs for care that falls below the deductible, they can’t afford it. So the centers are subsidizing that care by offering them means-tested sliding-scale fees. When the centers, which are not allowed to turn away patients for inability to pay, try to get the insurers to pay, the claims are usually denied, and the centers have to write it off as uncompensated care (Modern Healthcare, Dickson, 9/25).

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/daily-report.aspx

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

One of the advantages of reform that ensures that everyone would have health care coverage is that safety-net institutions, such as community health centers (CHCs), could be assured that payments would be made for the services they provide, ending the continual struggle of funding these institutions. As it turned out, reform will still leave 31 million uninsured, perpetuating this problem. But at least those now insured will no longer stress the budgets of the CHCs. Or will they?

Those purchasing the cheapest plans on the exchanges – the bronze plans – have an average of only 60 percent of their health care costs covered. This requires very high deductibles which are not affordable for many of the low-income individuals purchasing these plans. Because of high deductibles which are difficult to collect after services are rendered, many health care providers are requiring payment upfront. Many would-be patients end up walking away because of the lack of funds.

Where are these people to turn? The CHCs of course. They cannot turn patients away, so they see them. When the CHCs then bill the bronze plan insurers, the charges are below the deductibles and so the claims are denied. They can then turn to the patients to try to collect means-tested fees that would apply to the deductibles, but such efforts are often futile, and so the CHCs end up writing off the charges as uncompensated care.

This is the plight of the underinsured and of the providers who care for them. With low actuarial value plans and often-inaccessible narrow networks, underinsurance has become ubiquitous. It is one of the most serious flaws in health care financing today, not only for the exchange plans but now also for a rapidly growing percentage of employer-sponsored plans.

This is just one of thousands of major flaws in our financing system. It just isn’t right. We can fix this by changing to a single payer national health program. Let’s do it. Now.