More points of interest from the semi-final 2023 OEP report...

Wed, 01/11/2023 - 1:08pm

Here's some further points of interest from my analysis of the semi-final 2023 ACA Open Enrollment report earlier today:

As I noted this morning, Florida has by far the highest percent of its total statewide population enrolled in on-exchange ACA policies, with over 3.15 million Floridians enrolled so far (likely around 3.24 million when the final weekly numbers are included). This is 14.2% of Florida's total 2022 population according to the U.S. Census Bureau, or 1 in 7 residents of the state.

What about the other states? The table below sorts total 2023 OEP enrollment as of either 1/07/23 for federal exchange states (HC.gov) or 12/31/22 for state-based marketplace states (SBM) by what percent of the total state population has signed up so far. For New York and Minnesota the percent of total population includes each states Basic Health Plan (BHP) enrollment as well, since everyone enrolled in those plans would normally be eligible for a QHP instead:

Besides Florida, the state with the next highest percent of its total population enrolled in on-exchange ACA plans is Utah at 8.6%. Once again, the biggest factor here is whether or not a state has expanded Medicaid; non-expansion states have 8.3% of their total populations enrolled in exchange QHPs vs. just 3.7% in expansion states (again, including BHP enrollees for MN/NY); similarly, federal exchange states have 5.9% of their total populations enrolled vs. 3.9% in state-based exchange states.

I've also further broken out the Medicaid expansion year over year comparison to look at federal exchanges states only...that is, all SBM states have expanded Medicaid, while states hosted via HealthCare.Gov are split between expansion and non-expansion states. As you can see, there's still a dramatic difference between the two: While non-expansion states saw QHP enrollment jump by 23.4%, non-expansion states, even among those hosted on the federal exchange, only went up 10.3% since the same point last year:

Finally, here's my projection of what the final 2023 OEP QHP numbers should look like, assuming the final week/2-week enrollment bumps are similar to what they looked like during the 2022 OEP for each state. Assuming an identical OEP wrap-up, the national QHP total should come in just shy of 16.4 million people: