I'm assuming that "nearly 10M" only runs through Friday the 30th (the weekly HHS reports always run through the previous Friday). I projected crossing the 10M path the following day (Saturday). The 7.5M and 2.4M figures (9.9M total) are obviously rounded off, so the total could be as high as 7.54M + 2.44M, or 9.98M total. Plus, of course, it's possible that they're missing a few days of data for some of the state exchanges. Tack on another 25K or so for Saturday and you're at 10M (at worst it looks like I was off by 1 day).
New Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy: Measles vaccine is safe and effective
FEBRUARY 4, 2015, 8:02 AM|Dr. Vivek Murthy is making history as the first surgeon general of Indian descent and the youngest. Murthy joins "CBS This Morning" from Washington for his first on-camera interview since being confirmed as surgeon general and discusses the safety of the vaccine. He also touches on his views on the legalization of marijuana.
Another 1,644 QHP determinations yesterday. Assuming about half selected a plan, that's another 800 or so; the total should be up to about 116K by now. Medicaid has now reached 221K.
Shifting to public exchanges… We are pleased with our first year execution, particularly in light of the well-publicized challenges with the initial launch of the public exchanges. We ended the year with approximately 560 thousand on-exchange members, modestly ahead of our most recent projections. Additionally, while the open enrollment period is still on-going, we are on track to exceed our initial enrollment projections for 2015. Further, we have successfully transitioned the vast majority of our off-exchange membership to ACA-compliant plans, consistent with our previous projections. As we look at our total individual business, we now project that we will end the first quarter with approximately 1.1 million members, including up to 800 thousand on-exchange members.
There's a lot of great lines in the 1988 semi-autobiographical movie/play "Biloxi Blues" by Neil Simon. Most are funny, some are poignant. To me, one of the most powerful scenes is when Jerome/Simon's (played by Matthew Broderick) diary is found and read by his boot camp bunkmates. Among the private thoughts he has about them being revealed, one of his friends, Arnold Epstein, discovers that Jerome thinks that he (Epstein) is gay. Since the story is set in the World War II-era U.S. Army, this obviously has much bigger implications than it would today.
After the scene plays out, Jerome/Simon/Broderick's voiceover notes that:
"Something magical happens when people read something on paper...they have a tendency to believe it. They figure no one would have bothered to write it down if it wasn't true." (that's a paraphrase...I can't find the video clip or transcript for Biloxi Blues online).
Jerome concludes by noting that this incident taught him to be more careful about what he writes.
OK, kind of a stupid title, I know, but it's been a really long day...spent 3 hours clearing our driveway/porch/roof/etc. after a snowstorm (and my kid had a snow day as well, of course, making it difficult to get any work done even after I was done shoveling...)
Anyway, there were four ACA-related stories today which are all worthy of a full entry, but I'm too exhausted to do a full writeup on any of them:
How is Obamacare ruining your life today? Fox News host Tucker Carlson thinks that he knows how Obamacare is ruining your life if you live in Colorado, let’s see if he is correct! Colorado’s health care exchange, Connect for Health Colorado, glitched out last week and cancelled the health insurance of 3,600 Coloradans who went on the state’s exchange to shop for another plan. Tucker Carlson invited perfect Fox News victim Steven Roussel, an articulate white guy, to describe the absolute horror of this bureaucratic glitch, or, as Tucker Carlson put it, “Kafka comes to Colorado!” Indeed!
Two days ago, after seeing that the White House (and President Obama specifically) had come out with an official (if utterly obvious) statement stating that vaccinating children is absolutely recommended in response to the insanity of the past few years, I snarkily tweeted the following:
In response to this post on both Twitter and Facebook, 3 friends of mine (one a Republican, one an otherwise sensible Democrat and one with whom I've never discussed politics one way or the other) posted the following comments:
As I noted a week or so ago, there's a slight discrepancy between Healthcare.Gov's ON-exchange QHP tally for Oregon (currently 92,059 as of 1/23) and the state insurance division's record (85,912 through 1/25). This turns out to be due to a combination of lag time between HC.gov recording new enrollments & the state insurance dept. receiving them, plus the fact that one of the companies is only reporting paid enrollees, not total, which skews the numbers. As such, I'm using HC.gov's data for the on-exchange QHPs.
However, for off-exchange QHPs, the only source is the Oregon Dept. of Insurance, and this has gone up a couple thousand people over the past week or so:
The Insurance Division will collect enrollment information from carriers each week throughout 2015 open enrollment. Updated numbers will be posted each week on this web page.
Members enrolled,
Nov. 15-Jan. 25
On Healthcare.gov 85,912 Outside of Healthcare.gov 92,872
Total 178,784
Connect for Health Colorado has released their end-of-month enrollment update. Since the 1/15 deadline for February coverage, they've added another 3,728 QHP enrollees, or 233/day. At that rate they'd only add another 3,500 by 2/15, or less than 130K total (vs. their target of 194K or mine of 208K). Of course, that's an extremely unfair comparison, as 1/16 - 1/31 covers the slowest portion of the open enrollment period (immediately after a monthly deadline).
Even so, there's no realistic way that CO can hit their target at this point--they'd have to average 4,600/day just to hit theirs (and over 5,500 to hit mine). For comparison, last year Colorado averaged 627 enrollees per day throughout the entire open enrollment period (and that included the huge surges in December and March). This year they've averaged 1,607/day, and that includes all of the renewals from 2014. Even with a massive final surge, I just don't see any way of CO hitting more than 160,000 QHPs at this point, although I'll obviously be happy to be proven wrong.
