Charles Gaba's blog

Disclaimer: Health Sherpa is one of ACASignups.net's banner ad sponsors.

Over at the Wiley Online Library, Aleka Gurel, Director of Government Affairs at HealthSherpa, has published an excellent, in-the-weeds analysis of the history & impact of private insurance brokers & agents on ACA marketplace (on exchange) enrollment.

Here's an excerpt (note that this website is actually among the data sources she cites):

Last spring, I noted that total enrollment in healthcare policies either specifically created by or expanded to more people by the Affordable Care Act had broken 40 million Americans:

Across these 19 states alone, ACA Medicaid expansion enrollment is up 788,245 people since last March, or 6.7% overall. If you remove Missouri and Oklahoma, it's still up 4.28% since then, and again, this is still as much as 8 months out of date depending on the state. Assuming Illinois is wrong, removing it as well puts expansion enrollment up 5.4% since last March.

Assuming these states are representative, it's safe to assume that Medicaid expansion is up at least 4.3% nationally since March 2022, or around an additional 960,000 people. If you go with the higher end estimate (+5.4%), it would be up over 1.2 million nationally.

That puts the grand total at somewhere between 39.9 - 40.1 million people with ACA-enabled healthcare covered nationally.

Every month for years now, the Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) has published a monthly press release with a breakout of total Medicare, Medicaid & CHIP enrollment; the most recent one was posted in late February, and ran through November 2022.

Since December 2022, however, they haven't sent out the normal press release; instead, they included a brief note leading to a Medicaid/CHIP data slideshow , along with another note leading to their new Medicare Monthly Enrollment database.

In any event, according to the spreadsheet I exported, as of March 2024:

via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS):

• In March 2024, 82,751,338 individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, a decrease of 636,453 individuals (0.8%) from February 2024.
  • 75,645,578 individuals were enrolled in Medicaid in March 2024, a decrease of 644,997 individuals (0.8%) from February 2024.
  • 7,105,760 individuals were enrolled in CHIP in March 2024, an increase of 8,544 individuals (0.1%) from February 2024.
• As of March 2024, enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP has decreased by 11,116,668 individuals (11.8%) since March 2023, the final month of the Medicaid continuous enrollment condition under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and amended by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.
  • Medicaid enrollment has decreased by 11,084,981 individuals (12.8%).
  • CHIP enrollment has decreased by 31,687 individuals (0.4%).
• Between February 2020 and March 2023, enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP increased by 23,023,434 individuals (32.5%) to 93,868,006.
  • Medicaid enrollment increased by 22,681,263 individuals (35.4%).
  • CHIP enrollment increased by 342,171 individuals (5.0%).

It was just over three years ago that the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dramatically expanded & enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act, finally bringing the financial aid sliding income scale up to the levels it should have been in the first place over a decade earlier.

In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 - 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned "Subsidy Cliff" at 400% FPL, wherein a household earning even $1 more than that had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.

Here's what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:

It was just over three years ago that the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dramatically expanded & enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act, finally bringing the financial aid sliding income scale up to the levels it should have been in the first place over a decade earlier.

In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 - 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned "Subsidy Cliff" at 400% FPL, wherein a household earning even $1 more than that had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.

Here's what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:

Before I get started, I want to be clear about two things.

First, what exactly is "Project 2025?"

Via Wikipedia:

Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project, is a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican Party candidate win the 2024 presidential election.

It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of merit-based federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with those who will be more willing to enact the wishes of the next Republican president.

It asserts that the president has absolute power over the executive branch.

Critics of Project 2025 have characterized it as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the United States into an autocracy.

It was just over three years ago that the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dramatically expanded & enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act, finally bringing the financial aid sliding income scale up to the levels it should have been in the first place over a decade earlier.

In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 - 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned "Subsidy Cliff" at 400% FPL, wherein a household earning even $1 more than that had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.

Here's what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:

Along with posting detailed data on February effectuated enrollment by state since 2017 yesterday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) also included a spreadsheet with monthly effectuated enrollment broken out by state for every year since 2016.

While it's unfortunate that neither 2014 nor 2015 were included, I have partial data for the first two years of the ACA exchanges from a similar post I put together back in 2019.

It's important to understand the difference between someone selecting a Qualified Health Plan (QHP) from one of the ACA exchanges during the Open Enrollment Period and someone actually being enrolled in an effectuated policy...that is, just because you sign your family up for a policy on HealthCare.Gov or a state-based exchange, you aren't considered effectuated until you actually pay your first monthly premium.

Earlier this afternoon, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS, which should really be CMMS) released a whole bunch of much-awaited (by healthcare wonks) Effectuated Enrollment data for Affordable Care Act on-exchange enrollment.

While nearly 21.5 million Americans selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) via the federal and state ACA exchanges/marketplaces during the official 2024 Open Enrollment Period (along with an additional 1.3 million signing up for a Basic Health Plan (BHP) program in New York & Minnesota, which CMS continues to inexplicably treat as an afterthought in such reports), not all of them actually pay their first monthly premium (for January) for various reasons: