California: #ACATaxTime enrollments break 33K w/3 days left to go, reaches 1.5M QHP mark

This just in...

April 28, 2015

MORE THAN 33,000 CONSUMERS UNAWARE OF TAX PENALTY FOR BEING UNINSURED HAVE ENROLLED IN HEALTH INSURANCE THROUGH COVERED CALIFORNIA SINCE FEBRUARY
Those Without Health Insurance Have Three Days to Enroll in Covered California to Minimize Penalty for Being Uninsured in 2015

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With just two days until the April 30 deadline, Covered California urged consumers on Tuesday to enroll in health coverage and announced that more than 33,000 people who signed up since February indicated they were unaware of the tax penalty for being uninsured. The 33,000 enrollees were among more than 91,000 consumers who enrolled in coverage through special enrollment since open enrollment ended in February.

OK, here's how this impacts the numbers:

• "more than" 68,000 tax-specific QHP selections via Healthcare.Gov from 3/15 - 4/13 (2,300 per day)
• roughly 4,800 (perhaps 5,000?) tax-specific QHP selectiosn via the WA Health Planner from 2/17 - 4/17 (around 80/day)
• "more than" 33,000 tax-specific QHP selections via CoveredCA from 2/23 - 4/27 (508 per day)

That adds up to an average of roughly 2,900/day for 39 of the 47 states (+DC) allowing tax filing-specific special enrollments. If you subtract out the 3 remaining states (CO, ID & MA), the 39 states above made up 92% of the 11.3 million who enrolled during open enrollment.

Assuming the ratios are similar for the #ACATaxTime period, that should mean roughly 3,130 people enrolling per day nationally for tax penalty reasons, or roughly 140,000 nationally from 3/15 - 4/30.

One other interesting tidbit here: While the tax season SEP has been fairly sluggish at HC.gov (the pace slowed from 2,400/day the first 2 weeks to 2,100/day the second two weeks), the opposite seems to have happened in California:

• over 18K from 2/23 - 4/05 (428/day)
• about 4,600 from 4/06 - 4/12 (657/day)
• about 10,400 from 4/13 - 4/27 (693/day)

The other important number here is the 91,000 total "off-season" QHP selections to date. When you subtract the 33K tax-specific enrollees, that's an additional 58,000 "normal" off-season additions, which should be typical throughout most of the summer and fall. That's roughly 906 per day for California. Since CA made up 12% of the national total this year, extrapolated nationally that should come to roughly 7,500 per day, which is what I've been figuring this year, though of course it could be higher or lower than that.

This also means that California has now broken through the 1.5 million QHP selection milestone. They're still well short of their goal of 1.7 million this year, but it's still an improvement.