Analysis: Calif. Individual Insurance Market Grew by 64% in 2014
California's individual insurance market grew by 64%, reaching nearly 2.2 million in 2014, the year the Affordable Care Act fully took effect, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis released Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Analysis Details
For the analysis, researchers looked at insurers' filings with state regulators through Dec. 31, 2014. The ACA's second open enrollment period ended in February, meaning the data do not include figures from the entire second enrollment period.
Analysis Findings
Nationally, the analysis found that the individual insurance market grew by 46% in 2014. According to the analysis, 15.5 million U.S. residents purchased their own health insurance policy as of the end of 2014, an increase of 4.8 million from December 2013. About half of that enrollment increase came from four states:
- California;
- Florida;
- Georgia; and
- Texas (Terhune, Los Angeles Times, 4/29).
Specifically, 843,607 California residents joined the individual market as of Dec. 31, 2014, including those who enrolled through Covered California.
Further, six states saw the number of residents who purchased coverage on the individual market grow by more than 75%. Those states were:
- Arkansas;
- Florida;
- Georgia;
- Maine;
- New York; and
- Rhode Island (Kaiser Family Foundation release, 4/29).
Meanwhile, individual market enrollment decreased in Massachusetts and Colorado (Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, 4/29).
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