DATAPALOOZA! Colorado releases detailed OE5 demographic data

I'm not sure how I of all people managed to miss this, but Connect for Health Colorado released their official 2018 Open Enrollment Period report over a week ago:

We released our End of Open Enrollment report this week, our most detailed look at the impact we are having across Colorado. This year, you will see that more of our customers are receiving help through the Advance Premium Tax Credit – 69 percent, compared to 61 percent last year – and the average level of monthly tax credit help climbed to $505 from $369 last year.

Not surprising...the 34% average rate increases (about 6 points of which is due specifically to CSR reimbursement payments being cut off...much lower than most states) meant that a lot more people qualified for tax credits in the first place, and of course the amount of credits went up accordingly...a bit more, actually (37% on average).

The number of users of our Quick Cost and Plan Finder tool increased more than five-fold, to 163,323, while the number of calls to our Customer Service Center dropped by one-third.

I don't usually comment on customer service stats from the ACA exchanges, but this is another great example of how technological improvements are streamlining the process--1/3 fewer people needed to call up the exchange, presumably because they were able to use the online tools instead.

Even with a 23 percent reduction in the number of days in the enrollment period and confusion related to last year’s policy debate, our plan selections nearly equaled last year’s. Many of you receiving this message share in the credit for this success and I want to thank you and invite you to read the full report.

Hmmm...this is interesting, because according to the final numbers from both years that I have on hand, Colorado actually surpassed last year's enrollments slightly, by about 2.6%. I'll have to check the report to see what's going on...

Results: More than 165,000 Coloradans are Covered by Health Insurance!

The Open Enrollment Period resulted in growth in key areas, even with the period shortened by 22 days and the sometimes confusing messages owing from the ongoing healthcare policy debate. Building on improvements to our customer service, our fth Open Enrollment focus was on shorter wait times for customer service, more real-time tax-credit eligibility determinations and easier self-service options. This enabled more Coloradans to enroll on their own. By the close of the Open Enrollment Period, customers had submitted 165,777 health plan1 and 34,585 dental plan selections.

1 Enrollment totals in this report are for medical plan selections only, unless otherwise noted.

Again, I had 2017's total down as 161,568.