Nevada: Higher than avg. attrition, HC.gov move permanent

Three important pieces of information about Nevada's exchange out of this article:

1. NV's move to HC.gov will be permanent. The original plan was to only move to the federal exchange for 2015, then moving back to their own (2nd attempt) platform for 2016, which frankly always sounded a bit silly to me. There were lots of reasons for the states to run their own exchanges originally (federal cash to do so, autonomy/local control, etc.), but the federal funding will have dried up by then, and if everything is running smoothly at HC.gov, I'm not sure I see the point in uprooting the whole system at that point. Frankly, there's really only one major reason I could see to move back to their own platform, but...

2. While NV will be using the HC.gov software platform, they'll still legally be considered a state-run exchange, which means that they're safe from any potential SCOTUS Halbig/King fallout. This is basically the entire point I was making way back on July 2nd with my "Domain and a Splashpage" solution.

3. In less-positive news, it looks like NV's technical headaches are leading to a higher-than-typical attrition rate. The 38K high-water mark (for paying enrollees) came at the end of July. If they're down 4,000 as of early September, that's 10.5% in 5 weeks, or an average of 7.7% per month since then.

For comparison, other state attrition rates that I've tracked have ranged from just 0.33% per month (Maryland) to 6.3% per month (Florida) so far.

The board of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange voted Thursday to end its search for a company to replace Xerox, which lost its contract in May following the health link’s glitch-ridden rollout.

Instead, the board plans to stick permanently with borrowing enrollment and eligibility software from the federal healthcare.gov system.

“We do have very limited resources with the number of people working on this. I would say the goal should be a successful enrollment for 2015, and that we stop anything with the alternative survey (of vendors) so our limited staff can focus on that successful enrollment,” said board Chair Barbara Smith Campbell. “I think that’s what our Nevada consumers want too, most importantly.”

...Shawna DeRousse, chief operating officer of the exchange, said Nevada Health Link enrollments had dwindled to 34,000, down from 38,000 earlier this summer, and sign-ups may drop more as customers face re-enrollment in November.

...Exchange Executive Director Bruce Gilbert told the board that Nevada will remain a state-run marketplace that merely uses healthcare.gov’s software. That means Nevadans will remain eligible for federal premium tax credits, regardless of any pending court rulings on who qualifies.