Charles Gaba's blog

Last Friday I projected the total QHP selections through Healthcare.Gov to total around 6.73 million as of that day (January 9th).

The HHS Dept. just released the Week 8 "snapshot" report which has the actual total coming in slightly higher, at 6,756,438, about 0.4% higher.

The real news this week is that HHS has provided an updated STATE BY STATE BREAKDOWN for all 37 states operating off of the Federal ACA exchange!

This is a completely unexpected bonus, and kudos to the HHS Dept. for providing this!

I'm working right now on breaking the state-level numbers out by renewals and new enrollment using the table above + the monthly ASPE report from a couple of weeks ago, but that'll take a bit of time. Stay tuned...

As you may recall, a week or so ago I ran into a weird discrepancy with the numbers out of a few states. In the case of Vermont, it turned out that the enrollment data they were releasing included both QHPs and Medicaid without distinguishing between the two.

Fortunately, they've corrected this, so today's update (and future ones) has it all broken out:

The following numbers are up-to-date as of 11:59pm Monday, January 12, 2015.

New Vermont Health Connect Customers

8,709 individuals have checked out a 2015 health plan. This includes 3,506 individuals in Qualified Health Plans (private health insurance) and 5,203 individuals in Medicaid or Dr. Dynasaur plans.

OK, this is a pleasant surprise: Your Health Idaho has issued their 2nd enrollment report, and it's pretty darned good:

BOISE, Idaho – In the first two months of open enrollment, Your Health Idaho processed 83,383 customers, which includes consumers renewing coverage for 2015 and new applicants.

“Having health insurance gives Idahoans peace of mind that if something horrible should happen they are covered” said Your Health Idaho executive director, Pat Kelly. “We are happy so many Idahoans have been able to find a health insurance plan that meets their needs, however, we know many more people still need to find coverage and we will continue to reach out to them until open enrollment ends on February 15.”

ID had 74,689 enrollees as of December 14th (including autorenewals). They bumped out their January deadline a bit, but that's still a pretty good baseline for the post-deadline numbers: 8,694 between 12/15 - 12/31, or 511 per day.

They also include some demographic data for the 83.4K QHPs:

Massachusetts continues to set the example (are you paying attention, CoveredCA??), releasing near-daily enrollment reports and regular weekly reports with hard numbers on QHP enrollments every week (including payment data, I should note):

Again, assuming 45% QHP selections out of the 2,652 determined eligible for private policies, MA should have tacked on another 1,200 or so yesterday, bringing their QHP total up to around 89,600 to date.

In addition, they've enrolled another 3,709 into MassHealth (Medicaid).

Ouch. I was expecting CoveredCA to announce somewhere in the neighborhood of 314K new QHPs for 2015 through Sunday night (the 144K already announced, plus another 170K since 12/15). Instead, the total turned out to be just 217,146. I was way off on this figure, and I'm willing to accept that. In fact, in retrospect, I must've miscalculated something, since the odds of enrolling more new people in the 28 days following the January coverage deadline (which also included the "dead zones" of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day) than the 31 days before that deadline were almost nil.

What I don't find acceptable is that Peter Lee, after promising to release renewal data "in January" is now saying that they may not do so until February.

As I noted the other day, CoveredCA will be releasing (hopefully) completely updated ACA enrollment data, right up through Sunday night (1/11) in about a half an hour. So far they've only said that 144K new QHP enrollees have been added, and even that only includes 11/15 - 12/15. They haven't released any data on renewals of the 1.12 million 2014 enrollees yet, nor have they issued any further updates on new additions since Dec. 15th, 4 full weeks ago.

I've noted several times that I'm expecting them to announce roughly 960K renewals (active + automatic) from California, or around 85% of current enrollees to be renewed/re-enrolled. If that proves accurate, that would bring their 12/15 total up to around 1.1 million. That just leaves the new enrollments since 12/15.

Obviously the real unknown here is the renewal/autorenewal number. If it's fairly close to 85%, I should be pretty close on my total.

On the surface, this is just another (admittedly good) enrollment update from Maryland:

As of Jan. 11, 169,462 Marylanders have enrolled in quality, affordable health coverage for calendar year 2015, since the 90-day open enrollment period began Nov. 15. That includes 91,137 people enrolled in private Qualified Health Plans and 78,325 people enrolled in Medicaid.

Marylanders can enroll by Jan. 18 for coverage effective Feb. 1 and, if eligible, for an Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) to immediately lower their monthly insurance bills. Marylanders who were enrolled for 2014 should re-enroll by Jan. 18 for an Advanced Premium Tax Credit that begins Feb. 1. They will receive any tax credit owed for January 2015 when they file their federal income tax return in 2016.

In light of the latest jaw-droppingly offensive idiocy to come out of the disturbed grey matter of the Republican Party...

Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons

— Randy Weber (@TXRandy14) January 13, 2015

...this seems like a good time to repost a classic Jon Stewart clip:

(BONUS POINTS: The YouTube description is even written in French!)

Yes, that's right: We're quickly approaching the next big deadline: Private policy enrollment in time for coverage starting on February 1st.

Of the 3 monthly deadlines (January 1st start, February 1st start, March 1st start), this is the one getting the lowest amount of hype, for obvious reasons. The December 15th (or December 18, 23 or later, depending on the state) deadline was a huge deal because millions of people had to be renewed (either actively or automatically) in order to avoid any sort of a coverage gap, while a few million more people new to the exchanges jumped on board in time to start 2015 running. By my estimate, there should have been roughly 8.6 million people whose 2015 policies started on Jan. 1st.

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