Massachusetts: 110K QHPs, 206K Medicaid; Payment deadline extended due to blizzard

Last Friday's weekly report for the MA Health Connector had the official QHP selection tally up to 108,051 as of January 22nd. Since then, there have been another 4,751 QHP determinations, of which around 2,100 or more should have actually selected a policy.

Note the huge gap between last Friday (3,440) and the following two days (1,311 combined). This is partly due to the weekend drop-off, but is mostly because Friday was the enrollment deadline for February coverage. Anyone enrolling on Saturday or Sunday won't have their policy start until March 1st anyway, thus the massive drop-off.

Anyway, this should mean that Massachusett's QHP total is now up to at least 110K, while Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollment are now above 200K, at 206,063.

Meanwhile, the MA exchange has also announced that due to the massive blizzard/snowstorm rolling into the area later on today, they're extending the payment deadline for people who enrolled by the 1/23 deadline out to this Friday, January 30th:

Given the state of emergency and statewide travel ban, the Health Connector’s call center offices in Boston and Worcester will be closed tomorrow, Tuesday, January 27. However, consumers will still be able to call 1-877-MA-ENROLL from 8:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. for application and payment assistance. We will be leveraging a limited number of off-site customer service representatives to continue to assist consumers during this busy period.

Additionally, the payment deadline for February 1 coverage has been moved from Wednesday, January 28 to Friday, January 30 in recognition of the fact that the winter storm will impact our ability to operate at full capacity and accept in-person payments on Tuesday (and potentially Wednesday; we are currently planning to be open on Wednesday, but will re-evaluate based on the weather tomorrow afternoon). We want to ensure that we help as many people who selected a plan by Friday, January 23 complete the payment process for February 1 coverage. We are confident that we will be back to normal operations by Thursday, giving consumers two additional business days to pay for February 1 coverage.

Please continue to monitor the Health Connector’s website and Twitter account, as well as emails from this team, for the latest information. We will have an update about our Wednesday call center plans in this dashboard communication tomorrow afternoon.