FILE - In this March 23, 2010 file photo, Marcelas Owens of Seattle, left, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., right, and others, look on as President Barack Obama signs the health care bill in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Medical claims costs _ the biggest driver of health insurance premiums _ will jump an average 32 percent for individual policies under President Barack Obama?s overhaul, according to a study by the nation?s leading group of financial risk analysts. Recently released to its members, the report from the Society of Actuaries could turn into a big headache for the Obama administration at a time when many parts of the country remain skeptical about the Affordable Care Act. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - In this March 23, 2010 file photo, Marcelas Owens of Seattle, left, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., right, and others, look on as President Barack Obama signs the health care bill in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Medical claims costs _ the biggest driver of health insurance premiums _ will jump an average 32 percent for individual policies under President Barack Obama?s overhaul, according to a study by the nation?s leading group of financial risk analysts. Recently released to its members, the report from the Society of Actuaries could turn into a big headache for the Obama administration at a time when many parts of the country remain skeptical about the Affordable Care Act. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Map shows projected change in medical claim costs by
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A new study finds that insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
What does that mean for you?
It could increase premiums for at least some Americans.
If you are uninsured, or you buy your policy directly from an insurance company, you should pay attention.
But if you have an employer plan, like most workers and their families, odds are you don't have much to worry about.
The estimates from the Society of Actuaries could turn into a political headache for the Obama administration at a time when much of the country remains skeptical of the Affordable Care Act.
The administration is questioning the study, saying it doesn't give a full picture ? and costs will go down.
Actuaries are financial risk professionals who conduct long-range cost estimates for pension plans, insurance companies and government programs.
The study says claims costs will go up largely because sicker people will join the insurance pool. That's because the law forbids insurers from turning down those with pre-existing medical problems, effective Jan. 1. Everyone gets sick sooner or later, but sicker people also use more health care services.
"Claims cost is the most important driver of health care premiums," said Kristi Bohn, an actuary who worked on the study. Spending on sicker people and other high-cost groups will overwhelm an influx of younger, healthier people into the program, said the report.
The Obama administration challenged the design of the study, saying it focused only on one piece of the puzzle and ignored cost relief strategies in the law, such as tax credits to help people afford premiums and special payments to insurers who attract an outsize share of the sick.
The study also doesn't take into account the potential price-cutting effect of competition in new state insurance markets that will go live Oct. 1, administration officials said.
At a White House briefing Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said some of what passes for health insurance today is so skimpy it can't be compared to the comprehensive coverage available under the law. "Some of these folks have very high catastrophic plans that don't pay for anything unless you get hit by a bus," she said. "They're really mortgage protection, not health insurance."
Sebelius said the picture on premiums won't start coming into focus until insurers submit their bids. Those results may not be publicly known until late summer.
Another striking finding of the report was a wide disparity in cost impact among the states.
While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report concluded that the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers.
The differences are big. By 2017, the estimated increase would be 62 percent for California, about 80 percent for Ohio, more than 20 percent for Florida and 67 percent for Maryland. Much of the reason for the higher claims costs is that sicker people are expected to join the pool, the report said.
Part of the reason for the wide disparities is that states have different populations and insurance rules. In the relatively small number of states where insurers were already restricted from charging higher rates to older, sicker people, the cost impact is less.
The report did not make similar estimates for employer plans that most workers and families rely on. That's because the primary impact of Obama's law is on people who don't have coverage through their jobs.
A prominent national expert, recently retired Medicare chief actuary Rick Foster, said the report does "a credible job" of estimating potential enrollment and costs under the law, "without trying to tilt the answers in any particular direction."
"Having said that," Foster added, "actuaries tend to be financially conservative, so the various assumptions might be more inclined to consider what might go wrong than to anticipate that everything will work beautifully." Actuaries use statistics and economic theory to make long-range cost projections for insurance and pension programs sponsored by businesses and government. The society is headquartered near Chicago.
Bohn, the actuary who worked on the study, acknowledged it did not attempt to estimate the effect of subsidies, insurer competition and other factors that could offset cost increases. She said the goal was to look at the underlying cost of medical care.
"We don't see ourselves as a political organization," Bohn added. "We are trying to figure out what the situation at hand is."
On the plus side, the report found the law will cover more than 32 million currently uninsured Americans when fully phased in. And some states ? including New York and Massachusetts ? will see double-digit declines in costs for claims in the individual market.
Uncertainty over costs has been a major issue since the law passed three years ago, and remains so just months before a big push to cover the uninsured gets rolling Oct. 1. Middle-class households will be able to purchase subsidized private insurance in new marketplaces, while low-income people will be steered to Medicaid and other safety net programs. States are free to accept or reject a Medicaid expansion also offered under the law.
___
AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.
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Today, YouTube announced that it has hit a billion monthly users, which is an extremely insane metric. We know that YouTube is the go-to place for silly, interesting and important videos, but these numbers are something that even TV networks dream of. The great part for YouTube is that this means that online video ad-spend will go up, since the eyeballs appear to be ready, willing and able. It’s not only advertisers that are rushing YouTube, budding music artists are heading there too, and making a career from the attention that they get. Fueling this insane growth is the availability of YouTube on all devices, plus a growing interest from “Generation C,” which happens to love to curate. That content curation means that people are sitting in front of their device and watching video after video with genres that range from politics to cartoons. Here’s what YouTube had to say about the milestone: In the last eight years you?ve come to YouTube to watch, share and fall in love with videos from all over the world. Tens of thousands of partners have created channels that have found and built businesses for passionate, engaged audiences. Advertisers have taken notice: all of the Ad Age Top 100 brands are now running campaigns on YouTube. And today, we?re announcing a new milestone: YouTube now has more than a billion unique users every single month. Content creation is getting easier now, with every mobile device able to upload videos in minutes. Even YouTube caught on to this and launched a stripped down version of its app called Capture, that lets anyone grab video and upload it with two taps. To give the news some more color, YouTube broke the numbers down a bit: What does a billion people tuning into YouTube look like? - Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube. - Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences. - If YouTube were a country, we?d be the third largest in the world after China and India. - PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That?s a lot of Gangnam Style! These numbers, along with the adoption of YouTube by seemingly every generation, means that Google’s gut feeling on acquiring them was right. $1.65 billion certainly feels like a steal,
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Public release date: 12-Mar-2013
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