Some things to look for in this week's January HHS Report

OK, I don't know for sure that they'll release the January HHS ACA Report tomorrow, but the odds are very high that they will--the October report was released on November 13th; the November report was released on December 10th, and the December report was released on January 13th, so it should come out either tomorrow, Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.

I've already given my prediction for the total Private Exchange-based QHP total, which I figure should come in at around 3.3 million. Some other key things to bear in mind, however:

  • It's probably going to actually run 35 days, not 31 days. The HHS apparently runs reports using the full calendar week instead of by actual month, which is why the October report included the first 2 days of November, and the December report only ran through 12/28, not 12/31. As a result, the January report should run from 12/29 - 2/01, 35 days total.
  • As I noted the other day, don't confuse the 3.3 million (or whatever the number is) with the current 3.3 million that I have on the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is actually 3.03 million Private Exchange-Based QHP's, but there's another 297K or so oddball enrollments including SHOP, off-exchange and "uncertain". Assuming the HHS total is around 3.3M, my total will go up accordingly as well, to around 3.6M.
  • Also remember that I already have a (very) small amount of February enrollments included on the spreadsheet as well; OR runs through 2/6, and NY and KY both run through 2/02. Not much, but I figured I'd mention it.
  • There's about 570,000 Private QHP enrollments currently listed under "Not Broken Out By State". These came from HHS Sec. Sebelius' "3 Million" announcement on 1/23. Once the HHS report is released, these will obviously be...broken out by state. Which means they'll be removed from that field.
  • I didn't give a Medicaid/CHIP prediction because that's a lot more complicated, as my earlier analysis' have shown. There's a lot of churn, and the CMS report (which includes off-exchange Medicaid/CHIP enrollments along with duplicating some of the state exchange numbers as well) probably won't be out for another 10-12 days after the HHS report, based on prior months.
  • Don't expect much more in the way of "bulk" Medicaid/CHIP enrollments/transfers, along the lines of the 630K LIHP enrollees in California or the 130K Commonwealth Care enollees in Massachusetts. Most of these were set up & ready to go effective January 1st. There may be some stray additions in Oregon, West Virginia and so forth, however.
  • Remember that although the GOP legislature in Michigan did finally agree to expand Medicaid under the ACA, they also voted to have it not actually kick in until April 1st, the day after the private healthcare exchange enrollment period ends. Why on earth they did this (aside from trying to make some sort of political point), no one seems to really know, but the result is that Michigan will continue to be considered a "non-expansion" state until April...which basically means it's non-expansion through the end of the spreadsheet/graph period.

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