As I note every week, between Rhode Island's tiny population, tinier ACA exchange numbers and especially their decision to "front-load" autorenewals of all current enrollees ahead of the 12/23 deadline for January coverage, their official QHP selection tally is only going up a few hundred per week. Week Six is no diffferent:
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 12, 2015:
As I note every week, between Rhode Island's tiny population, tinier ACA exchange numbers and especially their decision to "front-load" autorenewals of all current enrollees ahead of the 12/23 deadline for January coverage, their official QHP selection tally is only going up a few hundred per week. Week Five is no diffferent:
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 5, 2015:
31,500 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
Nearly all of these individuals are current HSRI enrollees that have been auto-renewed into a 2016 plan.
1,592 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage, and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.
As I note every week, between Rhode Island's tiny population, tinier ACA exchange numbers and especially their decision to "front-load" autorenewals of all current enrollees ahead of the 12/23 deadline for January coverage, their official QHP selection tally is only going up a few hundred per week. Week Four is no diffferent:
PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released certain enrollment, demographic and volume data through Saturday, November 28, 2015, for Open Enrollment.
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of November 28, 2015:
31,238 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
Nearly all of these individuals are current HSRI enrollees that have been autorenewed into a 2016 plan.
1,163 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage, and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.
As I note every week, between Rhode Island's tiny population, tinier ACA exchange numbers and especially their decision to "front-load" autorenewals of all current enrollees ahead of the 12/23 deadline for January coverage, their official QHP selection tally is only going up a few hundred per week. Week Three is no diffferent:
PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released certain enrollment, demographic and volume data through Saturday, November 21, 2015, for Open Enrollment.
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of November 21, 2015:
31,012 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
Nearly all of these individuals are current HSRI enrollees that have been autorenewed into a 2016 plan. 920 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage, and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.
Note: When reading any headline about Rhode Island, always keep in mind that with a total statewide population of just over 1 million, any ACA numbers reported will generally be pretty tiny.
A few days ago, I noted in my entry about Rhode Island's #OE3 Week One enrollments that they had seemingly managed to chalk up a whopping 30,000 people in the first week, nearly as many as their total #OE2 enrollment for 2015. The obvious reason for this, however, is that unlike every other state which is holding off until mid-December to automatically renew current enrollees, Rhode Island has decided to "front-load" the process by doing so up front. In practice, this doesn't really change anything because those current enrollees can still go into their account before 12/23 and switch to a different plan if they wish...or to cancel the renewal altogether if they choose to drop out of any exchange plans next year.
As a result, the 30,680 QHP figure in RI is extremely skewed and can't be used to estimate/project any other state data. It also means, as I said at the time:
I'm not sure how this press release slipped by me (it was posted quietly on Nov. 11th), but my eyebrows immediately shot up when I read the first bullet point...only to turn into eyerolls when I read the second one:
PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released certain enrollment, demographic and volume data through Saturday, November 7, 2015, for Open Enrollment.
INDIVIDUAL/FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of November 7, 2015:
30,680 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
Nearly all of these individuals are current HSRI enrollees that have been auto-renewed into a 2016 plan.
306 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.
PROVIDENCE, RI- HealthSource RI (HSRI), Rhode Island’s state-based health benefits exchange, reported today the percentage of Rhode Islanders lacking health insurance has been reduced by more than half since 2012, according to results of a robust, state-wide survey commissioned by HSRI. The Health Information Survey (HIS) showed a drop in the uninsured rate from 11 percent in 2012 to five percent in 2015 (margin of error of +/- one percent.) The comprehensive HIS survey of 5,000 households and more than 12,000 individual Rhode Islanders shows similar trends to other national surveys released in recent weeks.
When I last checked in on Rhode Island's 2016 rate increase status, the three companies operating in the state (BCBSRI, Neighborhood and UnitedHealthcare) had requested hikes of 7%, 8.6% and 11% respectively. There was no off-exchange enrollment data, but the exchange-based market share breakdown was roughly 48.5% / 48.5% / 3%. This meant a requested average hike of around 7.9%.
Still unresolved is how much Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island may raise rates for its individual plans, which cover about 25,000 people. The nonprofit insurer initially requested an 18-percent increase, but no decision has yet been made because, by law, its rate hike requests are reviewed in a separate process that reserves a key role for the state's attorney general.
I was kind of hoping that this morning's Gallup uninsured rate news would include a monthly update for July; instead, it only runs through the end of June, the same quarterly survey results that they released a month ago. Then again, things probably didn't change much in July.
Instead, this time they've broken the numbers out by state:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Arkansas and Kentucky continue to have the sharpest reductions in their uninsured rates since the healthcare law took effect at the beginning of 2014. Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington join them as states that have at least a 10-percentage-point reduction in uninsured rates.
Louise Norris has done the heavy lifting for me regarding Rhode Island's 2016 rate change requests. Then again, there's only 3 companies operating on the exchange anyway (and I don't see any other companies operating off-exchange only, so I assume that's it for the state's individual market):
Of the three carriers that offer individual plans in HealthSource RI, only one –UnitedHealthcare of New England – shows up on the rate review tool that HHS is using to publish proposed rate hikes of ten percent or higher. United is requesting an average rate increase of about 11 percent for their Compass individual plans.
Blue Cross Blue Shield had also initially proposed weighted average rate hikes of 11 percent for their individual market plans in RI, but in early July, the carrier revised their projection to a weighted average rate increase of just 7 percent. The lower rate is partially due to the fact that in the FY 2016 budget (see below), the HealthSource RI premium fee is lower than initially proposed.
