Careful readers might notice a subtle but important change in The Graph today. Most of the key numbers (including both my 12/15 and 1/31 projections) remain the same (7.7 million and 13.8 million respectively), and the overall flow of the projection curve hasn't changed. However, there's a pretty obvious difference right in the middle of the graph...namely the current week (Week 7).
The previous version had my projections as follows:
About 130,0000 Marylanders have signed up so far for insurance plans for 2017 through marylandhealthconnection.gov. Open enrollment began Nov. 1 and lasts through January, though people who want insurance starting Jan. 1 must be signed up by Thursday. About 163,000 people were enrolled in private plans this year, an increase of 33 percent from 2015.
The article was posted yesterday (12/12), so I assume the 130K figure is as of 12/11. I'm fairly certain that this includes auto-renewals, seeing how last year their 12/15 tally stood at 150K including all renewals (both passive and automatic).
It's difficult to do an exact apples to apples comparison, however, since enrollments should be ramping up dramatically during these final few days before the 12/15 deadline, so I'm not gonna try.
As they race to repeal large parts of the Affordable Care Act, President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are leaving behind nearly everyone but their base voters and a handful of conservative activists.
Not a single major organization representing patients, physicians, hospitals or others who work in the nation’s healthcare system backs the GOP’s Obamacare strategy.
New polls also show far more Americans would like to expand or keep the healthcare law, rather than repeal it.
Even many conservative health policy experts caution that the emerging Republican plan, which calls for a vote in January to roll back insurance coverage followed by a lengthy period to develop a replacement, could be disastrous.
He goes on to document just a handful of the organizations screaming from the rooftops what an utter disaster repealing the ACA without a reasonable replacement plan already in place would be:
The Republican Party already has their playbook for how to repeal the Affordable Care Act, cause massive disruption and damage to the healthcare market, kick potentially up to 29 million people off their healthcare coverage and get away with it by blaming it on the law itself (and, of course, President Obama). They're so certain that their plan will work that some of them are openly admitting the jaw-dropping chutzpah of it all:
That could lead to a mess for the roughly 10 million Americans currently getting coverage through the government-run marketplaces — and backlash against the GOP.
...But the enticements most likely to keep insurers in the exchanges are the ones in Obamacare that Republicans spent years denouncing as industry “bailouts” — subsidies that were supposed to insulate plans from big losses.
...Many Republicans would prefer to argue the Obamacare markets were already in their death throes before they took charge — the question is whether they can get away with it.
I haven't written a single word about Maryland since early October. Last year their ACA exchange was very good about posting fairly regular enrollment updates; this year they've been dead silent about it so far, which is rather surprising (and no, I don't think it's because their numbers are bad...every other state I have data for seems to be doing pretty well or even better than last year so far).
Anyway, there's one bit of news out of the Old Line State (yes, I had to look it up to find out what their nickname is) today which is disappointing but not surprising when you understand the circumstances:
The Maryland Insurance Administration barred Evergreen Health from selling health insurance policies for individuals until federal and state regulators decide whether to allow the cooperative to convert to a for-profit insurer and receive a much-needed cash infusion.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that Massachusetts had confirmed just over 23,000 QHP selections for 2017 as of 11/17, consisting of around 15,800 renewing enrollees and 7,200 new people signing up.
Today I've received the latest enrollment data out of the Bay State:
As of Dec. 6, we have 10,210 new plans selected, plus an additional 13,251 new enrollments. That’s a total of 23,461 new plans selected so far in Open Enrollment.
That doesn’t include an additional 3,291 plans selected or enrollments by “returning” members. These would be people who had Health Connector coverage at some point, but for whatever reason do not right now and are coming back for 2017.
OK, that's 26,752 new enrollees (I define "new" as anyone signing up who isn't already currently enrolled in an effectuated exchange policy, even if they used to be and dropped it a few months earlier). That's more than 3.5x as many as 3 weeks earlier; impressive.
"We’ll get to that next year," Ryan told reporters when asked how long the transition away from Obamacare would be. "We just had a meeting with all our authorizers this morning about working on this with the Senate and the transition team. Those talks are ongoing."
..."We’re going to have these kinds of conversations. I don’t have an opinion on exactly what that timeline will be," he said. "There’s a lot of moving parts, and we have a lot of dialogue that we have to have with just our friends in the Senate and with the White House on the transition. So it’s just premature to suggest that we know how exactly long this transition is."
Oh, good. I'm sure this will make all those healthcare actuaries feel better.
There's exactly 7 daysjust 3 days to go before the first major 2017 Open Enrollment Period deadline (the 12/15 deadline in most states for coverage starting January 1st), so let's see where things stand.
I've confirmed 2,903,199 QHP selections nationally, of which 2,137,717 are via the federal exchange and 765,482 are via the dozen state exchanges.
However, most of this only runs through November 26, and I still have no enrollment data at all for DC, Idaho, Maryland, New York, Vermont or Washington State.
I estimate that the actual national total broke through 4.5 million last night, and should break 5.0 million by tomorrow (Friday) night.
Enrollments should have started ramping up dramatically as we go into the final few days before the big 12/15 deadline, culminating in around 7.7 million by the 15th.
After that, the HC.gov auto-renewals should be tacked on somewhere around 12/17 - 12/18.
As recently as 11/26/16, enrollments on both the federal and most state exchanges was either pacing or somewhat ahead of my projections, with no "Trump Factor" to speak of. I won't know for sure whether this is still the case until the HC.gov Week 5-6 Snapshot report is released, which likely won't be until next Wednesday.
I've been posting so many stories about the ugly implications of the ACA being repealed that it's kind of nice to get back to actually reporting on the number of people enrolling for ACA coverage again (hey, it's right there in the title of this site and everything...)
Rhode Island, which issued regular weekly enrollment reports last year, has been unusually silent so far this year...until today:
HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released certain enrollment, demographic and volume data through Saturday, December 3, 2016 for Open Enrollment.
INDIVIDUAL/FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 3, 2016
