HealthSource a key piece of R.I. insurance market

Despite a challenging rollout in 2014, HealthSource RI, Rhode Island’s health-benefits exchange, continues to connect more people to health insurance.

The speed with which individuals select a plan from among the many options, and then pay the first month’s premium, has grown steadily since the exchange’s opening, although since many of the plans auto-renew once a person is on the exchange, they do not need to go through the entire process each year.

Based on figures supplied by HealthSource, the final count (by the beginning of May 2014) for people covered by health insurance plans selected through the exchange in 2014 (and paid for) was 25,762. The final accounting for 2015 was 30,001, reached by Feb. 23, 2015. And through Feb. 13 this year, that number of people with insurance (that is those for which a plan’s first month’s premium has been paid) totaled 33,473, although when Providence Business News went to press, there was still more time for people to pay that first-month’s premiums.

In addition, the number of people covered through the small-business marketplace on the exchange continues to grow. In 2014 there were 2,681 people covered by plans purchased through the Small Business Health Options Program. In that portion of HealthSource, a business establishes an account and then employees select a plan that the employer has made an option from among the HealthSource plans. The number of “covered lives” includes both the employee of the small business and his or her dependents.

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In 2015, 4,003 lives were covered by SHOP plans. And through the first two months of 2016, 1,309 people have coverage through the SHOP option on HealthSource (that compares with 597 in 2014 and 1,184 for the same time period in 2014 and 2015, respectively). Unlike in the individual market, the number of covered lives through SHOP is cumulative, since businesses go to the marketplace only when their previous plan has expired, which can happen at any time.

While the number of people finding health insurance on the exchange has grown significantly, the average premiums have increased modestly from 2015 to 2016, although the 2016 figures are through January only.

In the individual market, the average monthly, full-price, medical premium in 2015 was $480 per household. So far in 2016, it is $503.

The average monthly, full-price, medical premium for plans purchased through SHOP was $707 per household in 2015, while it is $706 per household so far this year. •

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