As California’s health benefit exchange marketplace, Covered California, prepares for Plan Year 2015 enrollment in November, at least one of its board members is openly concerned whether plan enrollees will have predictable access to in-network health care providers.
At a Covered California board meeting this week, Board Member Kim Belshé observed there has been a “steady drumbeat” of media accounts of Plan Year 2014 enrollees having difficulty finding physicians willing to accept Covered California plans. Belshé pointed to an aggravating factor of what she described as nearly real time changes to plan network provider rosters. California Executive Director Peter Lee noted some plan issuers are updating their network provider lists as frequently as weekly.
That introduces a degree of uncertainty that devalues the plans by robbing enrollees of the peace of mind that they will be able to see a network provider without running the risk of being turned away or having to pay more for care from a non-network provider. With the use of smaller networks in order to hold down premium rates, the likelihood that a provider isn’t in a given plan’s network increases.
It appears to come down to money and specifically provider reimbursement rates. Media accounts such as this one point to provider dissatisfaction over reimbursement rates for Covered California plans. This San Jose Mercury News item explains:
Many doctors are upset about the discounted reimbursement rates that insurers have imposed on them to keep premiums low on the Covered California exchange. The new rates — as much as 30 percent lower than those paid by nonexchange plans — took effect Jan. 1, when the new health care plans of hundreds of thousands of Californians kicked in.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and California law require health plan issuers that offer plans both on and off the California exchange to offer off exchange plans at the same price as exchange plans. But there is no requirement that provider networks be the same among the plans. California law effective June 16, 2014 allows plan issuers to factor provider networks into setting premium rates. Narrower networks can decrease rates but with the tradeoff of access to a wider pool of providers that affords enrollees a greater level of certainty a given provider may be in their plan network.
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