Recalcitrant red states have done little — or nothing — to promote Obamacare. Yet their residents are getting health coverage by the millions.
Across the country, efforts to resist or undermine the law persist. Calls for repeal haven’t died down. Most of the states with Republicans in control aren’t running their own insurance exchanges, but their residents are still getting covered and still getting subsidies — unless the Supreme Court in an upcoming case rules that the subsidies are illegal in states using HealthCare.gov.
Fewer workers received employer-sponsored health coverage after the Great Recession than they did before, but don’t put the blame squarely on the Affordable Care Act, a study released Thursday says.
However, I just realized that they also threw in a new QHP enrollee update:
In addition, Lee reported Wednesday that as of Jan. 26, 273,111 consumers had picked a plan during open enrollment.
Add that to the 944K renewals and you have a grand total of 1,217,111 through 1/26.
That's an increase of 44,345 since January 12, or 3,167/day. Of course, this also includes the January 15th deadline, so it doesn't tell me much about the next week or so. For that, I'd have to look at the increase since 1/18 (1,200,427), which is just 16,684, or 2,085/day.
The following numbers are up-to-date as of 11:59pm Monday, January 26, 2015.
New Vermont Health Connect Customers
10,399 individuals have checked out a 2015 health plan. This includes 4,098 individuals in Qualified Health Plans (private health insurance) and 6,301 individuals in Medicaid or Dr. Dynasaur plans.
After a new customer checks out a plan, they must make an initial premium payment and have their selection processed before they have an active health plan. Of the 10,399 individuals who checked out, 8,853 have completed the enrollment process and have an active health plan (i.e., effectuated enrollment). Of those who completed the process, 2,713 are on a Qualified Health Plan and 6,140 are on Medicaid or Dr. Dynasaur.
Renewing 2014 Vermont Health Connect Plans
Unless a customer requested otherwise, all individuals who had an active health plan through the end of 2014 currently have health insurance coverage through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, MVP Health Care, Medicaid or Dr. Dynasaur. The insurance issuers have their information in their systems and ID cards remain active.
Over at Talking Points Memo, Sahil Kapur has a story which, on the one hand, reveals nothing that most people didn't already know...but at the same time includes some quotes from anonymous Republican staffers which are almost Onion-like in their point-blank candor:
"It's an opportunity that we've failed at for two decades. We've not been particularly close to being on the same page on this subject for two decades," said a congressional Republican health policy aide who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. "So this idea — we're ready to go? Actually no, we're not."
...But conversations with more than a dozen GOP lawmakers and aides indicate that the party is nowhere close to a solution. Outside health policy experts consulted by the Republicans are also at odds on how the party should respond.
Thanks to the massive snowstorm which hit New England (yes, it was pretty bad even if NYC itself only received a glancing blow), it's been several days since the last MA Health Connector update. Today, however, they released a new daily report which covers the past 3 days.
OK, that's 3,922. To get an idea of the drop-off from a deadline day to a post-deadline day, on 1/23 alone (MA's deadline for February coverage), they had 3,440 QHP determinations.
Anyway, assuming at least a 45% plan selection rate, that should be another 1,800 QHPs for Massachusetts, bringing the total up to at least 112,000 to date.
Meanwhile, Medicaid enrollment is now up to over 211K so far.
Last year I assumed, for months, that once March 31st came and went, I'd be free to close up shop. Then they tacked on the 2-week "extension period". Then a whole mess of other stuff happened, and, well, here I am, still chugging along almost 10 months later. This year, however, I was operating on the assumption that once February 15th came along, I'd be able to pull the plug (not saying that I would, just that I'd be free to do so if I wished). However...
Open Enrollment ends February 15. As a retail tax preparer, I'm flummoxed by this. We're barely beginning to see clients--the first ones with nothing but a W-2 are just trickling in the door.
There's several ways of measuring the performance of the states. You could go by sheer number of enrollees, but that's obviously unfair given the massive population differences between them. You can go by enrollments relative to their total population...except that some states have a much higher uninsured population than others, along with huge variations in average income, unemployment and a host of other variables.
In the end, I'm comparing the states across 4 different benchmarks:
1. How they're performing relative to last year's Open Enrollment Period
2. How they're performing relative to the "official" 2015 Open Enrollment Period targets put out by either the HHS Dept. (or the state government/exchange representative in some cases)
3. How they're performing relative to my 2015 Open Enrollment Period targets, and
4. How they're performing relative to the total potential exchange QHP enrollees.
This press release from the Washington exchange about tax credits for 2014 ACA enrollees isn't an official enrollment update, but they do include a rough update about 2/3 of the way down the text:
As of Jan. 25, more than 127,000 residents have enrolled in Qualified Health Plans for 2015 coverage, with approximately 40,000 of those customers signing up for the first time through Washington Healthplanfinder.
127K is about 10K more than they had enrolled as of January 17, or around 1,250/day. At that rate, they'd be likely to add another 26K by 2/15, for 153K total, which would be far short of the 215K that they're targeting (and way short of the 250K I was anticipating for WA). A decent mid-February surge should bring them up to around 175K, and a full surge could max out at 200K even. It's conceivable that they'll even squeak by their own target, but I don't see any way of reaching my own target.
The last 4 weekly HC.gov reports saw 96K (Christmas), 103K (New Year's), 163K (nothing significant) and 400K(the February coverage deadline for most states) on the federal exchange.
With the 1/15 deadline out of the way, the past week (and the next two) should come in somewhere between the last two: Fairly quiet, but steady and not completely dead. I'm assuming roughly 30K/day on HC.gov (around 40K/day nationally), which should have brought the total on HealthCare.Gov up to around 7.36 million as of Friday, January 23rd.
Whoops. Only 137K for the week; I overshot the mark significantly (off by 53% for the week, or about 0.9% cumulatively). The post-deadline drop-off was more significant than I figured. Crud.
As of January 17th, Rhode Island had enrolled about 28.8K people in private plans for 2015, or around 78% of their "official" target (based on the HHS Dept's "30% higher than last year" target).
RENEWAL UPDATE* As of January 24, 2015, 79% of Year One customers have renewed (selected a plan) for 2015 (75% of renewing customers paid the first month’s premium).
Total New Customers: 7,862 (6,539 paid)
Total Renewed Customers: 20,283 (19,189 paid) Total HealthSource RI enrollments for 2015 coverage: 28,145 (25,728 paid)
Hey, cool! That's a 91% payment rate! Um...except for one thing...somehow they've lost 644 people? Oh, wait...
