Until this year, most of the ACA exchanges, including HealthCare.Gov, would simply report how many people selected QHPs through the exchange, whether paid up or not. There's nothing wrong with this as long as it's made clear at some point how many people actually paid their premiums and had their policies effectuated; the argument over this issue was the entire basis of the infamous "But how many have PAID???" fuss back in 2014. It was such a Big Deal that the Republicans on the House Energy & Commerce Committee even published the results on a laughably garbage-filled "survey" they had sent out to a portion of the insurance carriers.
I launched the "State by State" chart feature towards the end of the 2015 Open Enrollment period last time around, and it proved to be pretty popular, so I've brought it back this year.
Note that whle the enrollment numbers for most states below are current through January 9nd, most of the state-based exchanges are either slightly more current or up to two weeks behind.
UPDATE 12/25/20: Another year has passed. 2020 has been The Worst in countless ways. Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away...and was immediately replaced with an ultra-right wing religious zealot. We lost John Lewis, David Prowse, Carl Reiner, Buck Henry, Brian Dennehy, Max von Sydow, Alex Trebek, Kirk Douglas, Sean Connery, Diana Rigg, Chadwick Boseman, Wilford Brimley and Neil Peart.
Oh...and we also lost a friend of mine (well, an online friend...I only met her in person once), Deborah Roseman, one of the sweetest, nicest and insightful women I've had the honor of crossing paths with. She died of a brain tumor in October, leaving behind a husband and young child.
Her pinned tweet remains poignant:
I've come to realize: Privilege is the difference between choosing to advocate change and having no choice but to do so.
Minnesota held their monthly board meeting. At first glance, it looks like they've managed to add 1,991 QHPs since December 28th, which would be impressive...except that, as a later slide shows, 1,871 of these are due to including their SHOP (small business) enrollees in today's number versus these folks not being included in the news article a week or so ago.
Nothing wrong with this, actually, but it does mean that the net gain of individual market QHPs is far less impressive (just 120), for a total of 67,800:
UPDATE/CORRECTION: I've been informed by the MNsure exchange that, in fact, they did add 1,991 individual QHP enrollments since 12/28/15 after all; apparently the 67,680 figure from a couple of weeks back also included SHOP QHPs, so the net increase really is nearly 2,000 people, which is indeed very impressive.
Adding 1,991 in just 13 days represents a 3.0% increase during the slowest part of the enrollment period. By comparison, as I noted earlier today, HC.gov added just 157,536 people from 12/27 - 1/09...or only 1.8% in 14 days. Minnesota has basically been doubling the enrollment rate of the federal exchange since Christmas, which is interesting even if the raw numbers are still small.
In addition, as MNsure noted in their correction: "45% of our QHP enrollments are NEW to MNsure in 2016. That's the highest percentage nationwide according to the data HHS released about a week and a half ago now."
My apologies for the error, and mazel tov on the improved numbers!
With all that in mind, if the Week 10 HC.gov Snapshot comes in anywhere under 200,000 today, I'll be dropping my final estimate to a range between 13.8 - 14.2 million.
Well, the Week 10 Snapshot was just released, and sure enough, it was pretty anemic:
Yeah, that's not great. In fact, this is almost identical to the number of new enrollees during Christmas Week (just over 74,000), making this the second lowest week of the Period.
As I noted last week, I'm expecting today's HC.gov Week 10 Snapshot Report to announce around 130,000 additional QHP selections between 1/03/16 - 1/09/16, which would bring the HC.gov total up around 8.74 million. This would also likely bring the national total up to around 11.55 million.
While those numbers wouldn't be bad, they would also make it very likely that the final 3 weeks are going to be weaker than I expected. Back on December 28th, I noted the following:
As of today [last week], we should be appx. 1.9 million ahead of last year...but as you note, the question now is whether it will continue to stay ahead of last year *proportionately*.
11.2M vs. 9.3M = appx. 20% ahead. My 14.7M projection assumes 25% growth over 11.7M. It's that 5% difference I'm concerned about (again, see the final week).
A subcommittee of a state task force recommended Monday continuing with a state-run health insurance exchange like MNsure for now, rather than transferring Minnesotans to the national exchange called HealthCare.gov
Moving to the federal website would be costly and wouldn't work with the state's MinnesotaCare insurance program, said a report endorsed by the 11-person subcommittee of the state task force on health care finance.
Plus, by moving to HealthCare.gov, the state would lose control over its network of health insurance navigators that help people enroll in coverage, according to the report.
Last week, the Rhode Island exchange reported a total of 34,627 QHP selections--paid and unpaid, as they're always careful to note.
The breakdown at the time was:
30,165 renewed/re-enrolled from 2015
4,462 newly-added for 2016
They also noted that:
27,124 of the 34,627 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, and have paid their first month’s premium.
Given that the thru-date was after New Year's, it was inevitable that another chunk of those who selected QHPs would be dropped soon...and sure enough, HealthSourceRI has done so in this week's report:
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT • As of January 9, 2016:
About 1.4 million households that got financial help for health insurance under President Barack Obama's law failed to properly account for it on their tax returns last year, putting their subsidies at risk if they want to keep coverage.
...IRS said the more than 1.4 million households that have failed to properly account for their 2014 tax credits include:
I guess the question here is just how much verification the HHS Dept. and/or the assorted state-based exchanges are doing of these claims. In cases like getting married/divorced, giving birth, becoming a citizen or getting out of jail, I would imagine the verification should be pretty easy. However, the "Tax Penalty Ignorance" exception was pretty much based on an honors system, and I don't know how easy/difficult it is for the feds to "verify" that your income has increased/decreased substantially...at least, not until you file your taxes the following year, which could be up to a year after the claim is made.
...So, what's the solution to this, assuming the problem is widespread? Well, I can think of some obvious tweaks to the rules, almost all of which involve simply reducing grace periods:
