What are consumers willing to pay for a broad network health plan?: Evidence from coveredCalifornia. Health Insurance Marketplaces have received considerable attention for their narrow network health plans. Yet, little is known about consumer tastes for network breadth and how they affect plan selection. I estimate demand for health plans in California's Marketplace, CoveredCalifornia. Using percentage point increase in network breadth, is $45.83 in post-subsidy monthly premiums. Variation in WTP indicates a selection mechanism exists whereby older households sort into broader network plans. I also find that households are highly premium sensitive, which may be a result of plan standardization in CoveredCalifornia.
Personalized Telephone Outreach Increased Health Insurance Take-Up For Hard-To-Reach Populations, But Challenges Remain. We tested the impact of personalized telephone calls from service center representatives on health plan enrollment in California's Affordable Care Act Marketplace, CoveredCalifornia, using a randomized controlled trial. The study sample included 79,522 consumers who had
Phone Outreach Nudges Among Individuals Losing Medicaid Coverage In May 2023, CoveredCalifornia, California's ACA marketplace, implemented its automatic enrollment program for individuals losing Medicaid coverage, as defined by Senate Bill 260. If individuals are found eligible for subsidized marketplace coverage, individuals will be automatically enrolled in the lowest cost silver plan available to them, but individuals must still take action to confirm their plan or pay their first month's premium. To identify whether the phone outreach is the effective outreach strategy to increase take-up in this population, CoveredCalifornia implemented this intervention. The results of this evaluation will inform operational and budgeting decisions. undefined
Evaluating the Effect of Automatic Plan Assignment and Enhanced Outreach of Marketplace Take-up Facilitated enrollment offers a potential solution to some administrative burdens and choice frictions that may produce incomplete take-up of marketplace coverage. Because CoveredCalifornia, California's ACA individual marketplace, and Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, share an eligibility system, CoveredCalifornia has the ability to identify individuals who are eligible for marketplace coverage upon losing Medicaid eligibility. This evaluation will compare the effectiveness of facilitated enrollment strategies, including personalized plan pre-selection and personalized quotes of net premiums, to other enhanced, but general outreach tactics, on marketplace take-up among individuals
The redesign of consumer cost sharing for specialty drugs at the California Health Insurance Exchange. This paper describes the redesign of health benefits at CoveredCalifornia-the nation's largest health insurance exchange, which covers 1.3 million individuals, and its benefit designs extending to hundreds of thousands more enrollees through insurance products sold outside the exchange individual, or $13,500 family, annual medical payment limit. The pharmacy deductible and monthly out-of-pocket payment limit are substantially lower for low-income enrollees in the subsidized silver-tier products. The CoveredCalifornia redesign indicates that patients can be shielded from the most onerous cost-sharing burdens while keeping premiums affordable for the entire enrolled population; however
benefits (UIB) for at least one week in 2021. Under the law, for 2021 only, CoveredCalifornia consumers will have their household income level treated as if it were at 138.1 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), regardless of their projected annual income, which will make them eligible for a Silver 94 plan, and which offers the greatest value on cost-sharing benefits.But in order to access those