OK, this is kind of strange...the WA exchange has not posted any press releases since the 23rd, and specifically told me that they don't have any updated numbers since then, but this brief story at KLEW TV is pretty clear about it...and the numbers are about right, since they only include 1 more day of data (the press release went through the 22nd, and the 23rd was the deadline for January coverage in WA):
LEWISTON, ID - We start off with news about healthcare. 101,000 people in Washington State have bought health insurance through the Washington Exchange so far during this open enrollment period.
About 76,000 renewed their policies by the Tuesday deadline for January first coverage. About 25,000 are new to the exchange and will have insurance on the first day of the new year.
The article also gives a solid number for how many current enrollees didn't make the deadline and what their options are:
Lost in the shuffle of the first monthly HHS report (which only ran through 12/15 and was missing gobs of data) was their weekly snapshot report, which was released the same day. It runs through 12/26, but isn't broken out by state, of course, and most importantly only includes QHP selections for the 37 states run through HC.gov.
I was expecting the number to drop substantially last week, of course, since the January coverage deadine has passed and the vast bulk of renewals (active + automatic) were already baked into the prior week's report. I figured that we'd be looking at roughly 30K/day on HC.gov until around January 10th, when it should start to spike again...or around 210K for the week.
Instead, I was surprised at how much it dropped last week--only 96,000 more QHPs added.
The Massachusetts exchange has released their weekly dashboard report, which includes actual QHP selections and payments, although that data only runs through 12/29.
Add them up and you get 79,842 total QHP selections, of which 55,260 have paid their first premium and are fully enrolled. This may sound like only a 69% payment rate, but remember that many of the remaining 24,582 aren't scheduled to have their current coverage dropped until the end of January and thus aren't even expecting their new policy to kick in until February 1st anyway. As always, the payments are a rolling average, and will ebb & flow until around mid-March (after which they should stabilize at around 88% at any given time).
For example, on Wednesday the 31st, the MA exchange issued a press release which stated that the total number who have paid in time for January 1st coverage is "over 50,000":
There hasn't been a lot of news about the upcoming King v. Burwell case lately, other than the fact that it's been scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court on March 4th (with a final ruling likely to come out sometime in June).
One thing to watch as we approach the SCOTUS hearings on King v. Burwell this spring is how many people are newly qualifying for subsidies in those states as this year’s enrollment period continues.
The Department of Health and Human Services has released a new reporton enrollment data that suggests that number could be very large — which could (theoretically, at least) make it harder for SCOTUS to gut the law.
Remember, Rhode Island bumped out their January coverage deadline all the way through New Year's Eve, so even this data is still presumably missing a small surge on the final day:
HEALTHSOURCE RI RELEASES ENROLLMENT, DEMOGRAPHIC AND VOLUME DATA THROUGH DECEMBER 27, 2014
Posted on January 2, 2015 | By HealthSource RI
PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released enrollment data, certain demographic data and certain volume metrics through Saturday, December 27, 2014, for Open Enrollment.
Enrollment data (November 7, 2014 through December 27, 2014)
As of December 27, 2014, 71% of Year One customers have renewed plans for 2015.*
Total New Customers: 4,969
Total Renewed Customers: 17,941
Total HealthSource RI enrollments for 2015 coverage
(including those who have not yet paid): 22,910
*As of December 30, 74% of Year One customers have renewed plans for 2015.
SHOP (cumulative as of December 27, 2014)
Small employer applications completed: 532
Small employer accounts created: 1,904 Small employer enrollment: 437 (representing 3,157 covered lives, based on their submitted census)
Small employers enrolling in Full Choice Model: 76%
On it's surface, this sounds like a decent but not amazing update: Up 2,600 since 12/28. However, consider this: 86,347 QHP selections is up 6,360 since MD's January coverage deadline of 12/18. That means they're still enrolling new people at 454 per day for coverage starting in February...as opposed to the 339/day that they averaged duing the entire first open enrollment period. That's a rate over 33% faster.
In all the hullabaloo over the monthly HHS report yesterday, not a whole lot has been said about the Medicaid/CHIP side of things. Medicaid/CHIP enrollment has always been much trickier to pin down than private QHPs, partly due to the high "churn" rate of people moving onto & off of it, partly due to about 40% of the states not having implemented any version of ACA Medicaid expansion anyway, partly due to the headache-inducing rules for eligibility and nightmarish paperwork hoops people have to jump through to enroll in some states.
The other reason for confusion is that the HHS reports only state how many people were determined eligible for Medicaid/CHIP in each state. It doesn't necessarily follow that 100% of those folks actually end up being enrolled. This footnote from page 21 should give you an idea of how much of a pain in the ass this is to figure out:
In all the fuss and bother over yesterday's monthly HHS report (which only ran through the 15th), I almost forgot about the HC.gov-only "weekly snapshot" which was also released at the same time. This report only covers the 37 states run via the federal exchange, but is more recent; it goes all the way up through December 26th, just 5 days ago.
I did acknowledge the 96,446 additional QHP selections since the previous week at the very end of my analysis of the monthly report, but didn't look at the rest of the weekly report at the time. There's not a whole lot of new data here, but there are a couple of noteworthy tidbits:
They just released today's daily dashboard report, and the QHP eligibility determinations have gone up by another 6,263 people. Every day since Nov. 15th, roughly 50% of the QHP determinations have gone on to actually select a plan that very same day; the rate has ranged from 45% - 55% but always hovers near the 50% mark. Assuming this is still the case, that should mean at least 3,100 more QHP selections as of last night, for a total of around 80,600 to date.
In addition, MA has confirmed 139,063 new Medicaid/MassHealth enrollees, which have immediate effect.
As a side note, this means that MA has now enrolled more than 2.5x as many people in private plans for 2015 as they did all of last year.
