Unintended Consequences: In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton.
When United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away Saturday evening, the reaction from Republican Senators and right-wing political pundits was instant and consistent: President Obama shouldn't be allowed to nominate anyone to replace him (even though that's precisely and specifically one of the responsibilities of the current President of the United States is supposed to do), and if he does so, the U.S. Senate will refuse to even allow the nominee a hearing, much less confirm them.
It's a series of questions, some of which are yes/no, some are checkboxes and so forth about your situation. I've posted screen shots below (note that some of the info is phony for demo purposes):
As of 2/1, total QHPs are 165,123 (49,377 new + 115,746 renewal-active and passive).
However, this number didn't include a few "overtime" days of enrollees, which padded the number a bit more...nor did it include the subtraction of unpaid QHP enrollees (ie, cancellations/purging of enrollees who didn't pay their January premiums in time, were transferred to Medicaid due to income changes and so forth).
On the one hand, I'm kicking myself for not noticing this red flag when the final 2016 Open Enrollment numbers were released last week. On the other hand, I was trying to absorb, analyze and compile a lot of data at the time, so I should cut myself a bit of slack for missing it.
When the numbers were announced, one figure which seemed surprisingly high was that New York (which still hasn't actually released their final numbers yet) apparently enrolled around 400,000 people in their new ACA-created Basic Health Plan (BHP)...and that 300,000 of these folks had supposedly shifted to the BHP program from existing exchange QHP policies.
This did seem surprisingly high to me; I had assumed that instead of NY's QHP total going up around 25% (as I was expecting in most other states), it would stay essentially flat, with the cannibalization by BHPs essentially cancelling out the 100,000 new QHP enrollees I was expecting. 300K making the move was 3x as many as I was expecting. However, in the flurry of other data to crunch, I let this slip by me.
As of this morning, there were still 4 states with some 2016 Open Enrollment data missing: Idaho, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont. The Massachusetts exchange board held their monthly meeting today, so I can cross one more state off the list:
By early February, approximately 201,000 individuals were enrolled in 2016 health coverage.
Over 36,000 new members are enrolled in QHPs. For a frame of reference, our new members amount to about 15% of the size of last year’s estimated uninsured population*
Of the approximately 27,000 new members who indicated a race or ethnicity in their application, about 12% are of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin, 8% are African American and 4% are Chinese
We continue to see a high retention rate for our 2015 membership at about 94%
Individuals who selected a plan between January 24th and January 31st still have time to pay for coverage effective March 1, so new membership tied to Open Enrollment may continue to grow
Once the dust settled on the 2014 and 2015 Open Enrollment periods, only a handful of state exchanges bothered continuing to report off-season exchange enrollments, but I was able to extrapolate those numbers pretty accurately nationwide: Around 7,500 people per day were still signing up via Special Enrollment Periods throughout the summer/fall of 2014, and around 8,500 per day did so last year (not including the time-limited #ACATaxTime SEP from mid-March through the end of April 2015).
This year, that number is expected to drop somewhat due to HHS supposedly cracking down on SEPs in both variety and eligibility verification, but I still wouldn't be surprised if at least, say, 6,000 people per day end up signing up between now and next November (or around 1.6 million total, give or take).
Anyway, even the state exchanges which did keep posting updates generally only did so monthly...which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Rhode Island exchange appears to be sticking to their Weekly Enrollment Report guns even after the dust has settled:
I'm swamped with day job stuff today, but this email just came through:
On the Oriely Factor it was indicated that you propose taking away social security benefits. I paid into ssi from age 13 to age 67. I support your ur champagne with donations and support your conditional approach. Please do not take my earned SSI
It took me a few minutes to figure out how this ended up in my in box, but then I realized: TedCrooz.com
As far as I can tell, this poor soul...
a) Mistook this website for that of Ted Cruz's, even though it's pretty obvious that it has no connection to his campaign whatsoever.
b) Watches The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News (he appears to be in at least his late 60's, so no shocker there)
c) Is (or was, until now) a supporter of Ted Cruz, to the point that he's apparently made financial donations to his campaign.
d) Is now, however, deeply concerned about Ted Cruz taking away his Social Security benefits, which he paid into for 54 years.
At first, I started to chuckle a little at his error and the "champagne" misspelling...but the more I thought about it, this is just plain sad and anger-inducing.
In all, 116,019 Connecticut residents signed up for private insurance through the state’s health insurance exchange, Access Health CT, during the open enrollment period that ended last week, officials said Monday.
That figure is slightly higher than the 110,095 who signed up during last year’s enrollment period and exchange officials’ goal for this year of signing up 105,000 to 115,000.
Connecticut only improved over last year by about 5.4%, but much of that is because, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, CT only had around 62,000 uninsured people eligible for APTC assistance to begin with (they also have around 100K more uninsured who'd have to pay full price if they enrolled via the exchanges, but those people can get the same policies off-exchange anyway, and many very well might have done just that).
