I've just been sent a link to the first official update on ACA exchange enrollment in DC. It includes a whole mess of demographic data (click below for full-size version), but the main takeaway is near the top: 18,740 QHP selections as of December 5th (compared against December 8th of last year). With auto-renewals included, this year's tally is about 2% shy vs. last year, but again, those extra 3 days make a bigger difference than you might think, especially as we approach the mid-December deadline.
It's important to remember that DC, along with California and New York, is sticking with the full 3-month Open Enrollment Period this year, so residents will still have another 6 weeks after 12/15 to sign up for coverage starting in either February or March.
Excellent news out of Massachusetts! I haven't posted any updates from the Bay State since 11/15, when they reported enrollments were up 40% year over year, but today they've given me very comprehensive and up-to-date numbers:
As of Dec. 6, we had a total of 259,815 plan selections and enrollments. This includes auto renewal of existing members. Of that, 26,074 are people who are new for 2018.
For comparison sake, for Dec. 6, 2016, we were at 244,845, and 25,746 for the new. These numbers also includes auto renewal, of course.
Obviously when you throw auto-renewals into the mix, the percentage increase drops substantially, but they're still up 6% over last year (nearly 15,000 people), and new enrolles are up about 1%.
OK, today saw two major 2018 Open Enrollment Period data updates out of HealthCare.Gov and Covered California, plus a minor one out of Maryland.
As I reported this morning, the HC.gov Week 5 Snapshot report came in much lower than I expected this week, at just 823K vs. the 1.2 million I was anticipating; as a result, the HC.gov section of The Graph (in green below) has finally reverted back to my original projection line with a total of 3.6 million as of December 2nd. If it follows my trendline this week, HC.gov should tack on another 1.2 million for a total of 4.8 million by Saturday night, December 9th, ahead of what should be the Big Final Week Surge.
Covered California’s Open Enrollment Continues at a Brisk Pace with New Data Showing Most Consumers Who Renewed and Enrolled in November will Pay Less in 2018
More than 102,000 new consumers selected a plan during the first month of open enrollment, a 28 percent increase over the same time period last year.
This just in from the California Insurance Dept...
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After being way off in my initial HC.gov projections the first and second weeks of the 2018 Open Enrollment Period, I recalibrated and was dead on target for Weeks 3and 4: As of November 25th, just shy of 2.8 million people had selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through the federal exchange.
As I had predicted, there were a bunch of eye-roll-inducing headlines about how enrollments had dropped off a cliff, etc etc, which completely ignored the fact that it was Thanksgiving week, and that a 35%+ drop-off is typical for the holiday weekend. Whatever.
Just now, the MD Health Connection posted an update through this week:
Incoming exec director Michele Eberle of @MarylandConnect urges Marylanders to enroll in health coverage with 10 days left. New enrollments up 14% this year. Mobile app visitors up 140% Overall enrollment up 4% Keep it going! pic.twitter.com/75g2qu5PbC
I'm assuming these stats are as of December 4th. Last year MD's official QHP selection tally as of December 3rd was around 129,000; if they're 4% ahead of that as of the same date, that means they should have a little over 134,000 to date this year.
So @SenatorCollins sold out for bills which won’t help much and aren’t gonna happen anyway.@jeffflake sold out for a promise to attend a meeting which won’t happen.@lisamurkowski sold out for destroying her own environment.@SenJohnMcCain sold out for...nothing at all. Huh.
As I had previously noted, the Alexander-Murray bill would simply restore CSR funding into place which was already assumed to be there when the CBO made their "13 million losing coverage/10% rate hike" projection earlier, making passing it kind of a non-factor when it comes to the impact of repealing the mandate. That just left the reinsurance bill. Collins original proposal was a mere $2.25 billion/year (and only for two years at that)...which I estimated would fall short by a factor of anywhere from 3x to 7x, depending on which back-of-the-envelope math you use:
