Connecticut: Fact-Check reveals a few more data points re. Medicaid & SHOP

Over at the CT Mirror, Arielle Levin Becker does the same type of wonky number-crunching that I specialize in here at ACASignups.net to figure out whether the state's recent claims of the ACA slashing their uninsured rate in half (from 8% to 4%) hold water.

It gets a bit involved, but her conclusion is that yeah, it probably has been cut significantly, but a specific percent number is hart to pinpoint since there's still a lot of noise on the ESI side as well as continuous churn across the board as people move on & off of different plans.

However, it does include a few nuggets which help me update my own data. For one thing, CT's SHOP enrollment has gone up from 500 as of February to a whopping...602 people last month:

Access Health also operates an exchange for small businesses, although uptake has been low. As of mid-July, it covered 602 people.

For another, it looks like my Medicaid expansion/woodworker estimates are actually a bit on the low side; I've been estimating these as around 47K and 32K respectively, but it looks like the actual numbers are more like 66K & 45K:

The growth occurred primarily among poor adults who don’t have minor children, who became newly eligible for Medicaid as part of the health law. But nearly 40 percent of the overall growth -- close to 45,000 people -- occurred among parents and children, who are covered by a part of the program that pre-dates Obamacare. (The income limit for that group rose slightly because of the health law, and the outreach efforts associated with Obamacare could have led some people who didn’t know they were already eligible to sign up.)

Overall, the number of people covered by Medicaid grew by 110,658 since Jan. 1, when eligibility for the program expanded, according to the Department of Social Services.

Of course, the churn factor makes some of these numbers slippery as always:

Access Health figures show that more than 200,000 people signed up for Medicaid since last fall.

Why the gap between the number who signed up for Medicaid and the number covered? Some of it is the result of people leaving the program. Nearly 43,500 people were found to be no longer eligible since January, for example.

Finally, while this doesn't impact my overall estimate of roughly 8 million off-exchange enrollments, it does provide further evidence that 8M is a reasonable national estimate, and helps break that out at the state level:

Last November, 108,287 Connecticut residents got their insurance through the state’s individual market, which covers people who buy health plans on their own.

As of June 30, that number had grown to 167,838, according to figures from the Connecticut Insurance Department. That’s a 55 percent increase.

Since Connecticut's exchange-based QHP number was recently revealed to be roughly 86,000 people, that means the other 81,000 or so enrolled off the exchange.

Anyone who reads my stuff regularly should read Becker's piece.