Maryland: QHPs up to 75K...but they'll have to re-enroll this fall

Hat Tip To: 
deaconblues, Esther F.

The good news: While Maryland's enrollment numbers are still way below their expectations due primarily to a screwed-up exchange website, they're continuing to crank out smaller numbers of enrollees, and have now hit the 75K milestone:

Maryland enrolled about 75,000 people in private health plans, about half as many as the state initially aimed to sign up in private insurance plans. However, the state ended up enrolling about 300,000 people through Medicaid. The Connecticut health exchange technology was chosen largely because it was effective and preserves Medicaid enrollments.

The 300K Medicaid number is impressive, but I already have that number plugged in so no changes there.

On the down side, MD's move to an all-new exchange website platform (purchased from Connecticut), while a welcome move, will also require everyone who's receiving subsidies to re-enroll this November:

Signing up for health coverage through Maryland’s online health exchange last year was a terribly frustrating experience for many residents, and it looks like some 57,700 of them will be required to re-enroll this fall or risk losing their tax subsidy. There’s just no way to transfer subsidy data to the new Connecticut-inspired system, adopted after our own exchange was abandoned in April.

... Even if you are one of the 14,507 who signed up through the health exchange and didn’t qualify for a subsidy, you may want to re-enroll anyway. You may qualify for a subsidy that you didn’t last year, and plan prices may be different.

While this is no doubt irritating, to be honest I completely agree with the last part...and think that everyone should really log into their account, whether in MD, CA, NY or any of the HC.gov states this November to double-check their subsidy status, as well as what new policy offerings are on the table.

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