Charles Gaba's blog

Yesterday on HealthCare.Gov's Facebook page they posted a seemingly innocuous but rather curiously worded post/promo:

I'm not sure what to make of this. "Over a million people enrolled" it says. The embedded image specifically refers to 2015 coverage (and of course that's what they're pushing hard right now). Yet the most recent HHS Dept. weekly "snapshot" report has the number of plan selections as 2,446,562.

So, what does "over a million" refer to? Well, it could be a couple of things. It's most likely referring to the 48% of those who are new enrollees (around 1.17 million)...but if that was the case, it would make more sense to me to include the confirmed renewals for 2015 as well and say "more than 2.4 million enrolled." 

A reader brought this article over at The Hill to my attention this morning:

At least 1.1 million people have signed up for healthcare through ObamaCare outside of the federal marketplace, according to a review of state data by The Hill.

That tally is on top of the 2.5 million people who signed up for coverage in the 37 states using the federal exchange, putting ObamaCare on track to outpace its goal for 2015.

I have a confirmed total of just over 3.5 million private policy enrollments via the various exchanges (federal + state) to date, so when I read the first sentences, it made me think "Ah ha! They've been reading ACASignups.net and also managed to find at least another 100K policy enrollments that I've missed! I was intrigued. But then...

Out of the 13 states that don’t use the federal exchange, 11 have reported data since Dec. 17 — a total of 1,142,124 sign-ups. Rhode Island and Idaho have not yet reported numbers.

A quick reminder: If you live in Idaho or New York, today is the deadline to enroll in a private healthcare policy if you want coverage starting on January 1st, 2015.

Here's the upcoming deadlines for January coverage for other states:

Massachusetts, Rhode Island & Washington State: Tuesday, December 23rd

Minnesota & Vermont: Wednesday, December 31st

If you live in any other state, you have until January 15th to enroll for coverage starting on February 1st.

Open enrollment weekly updates

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-Dec. 14
  • On Healthcare.gov 40,581
  • Outside of Healthcare.gov 26,799
  • Total 67,380​

About the data: Enrolled means a person has selected a plan. Consumers must pay the first month's premium for their coverage to become effective. These numbers do not identify whether the first month's premium has been paid. These numbers do not include Oregonians enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid).

This updated from Oregon doesn't increase the total on the spreadsheet or graph, because it's already included in the HC.gov reports, but it's important for other reasons, including:

When I made my original projection of 12.0 million QHP selections by 2/15/15, I assumed that roughly 6.1 million of the 6.7 million current 2014 enrollees would re-up via one of three methods:

  • Actively logging into their existing account and renewing their current policy/switching to a different one
  • Actively creating a new account (in states like MA, MD, OR & NV) and enrolling the same/a different policy for 2015
  • Taking no action whatsoever and being automatically re-enrolled in their current account (or one nearly identical if the current one is no longer available).

In other words, I was operating on the assumption that roughly 6.1 million (91%) of current enrollees would stay on board one way or another, plus another 5.9 million new folks signing up for the first time.

OK, it looks like my theory about MA's "QHPs as % of Determinations" theory was wrong; I assumed that it would have started increasing from 50% over the past week, intstead it dropped to about 48% (or held steady at 52% if you include the "plans in cart" which neither I nor the MA exchange is doing anyway).

Therefore, the bad news is that the official total is around 8,300 fewer than I thought: 53,490 thorugh yesterday. The good news is that this is still an excellent number, and there's still tens of thousands of people who've started the process who have until next Tuesday to wrap it up.

In addition, remember my snark from 11/16 about "ONLY 3.5% HAVE PAID!!"? Well, guess what: That percentage is up to 34%, and they still have 5 days to pay (I presume they're dealing with a flood of payments at the moment).

The Medicaid tally holds at 98,530 since it doesn't include yesterday.

BREAKING:

More Than 136,000 Marylanders Have Enrolled for Jan. 1 Coverage in State’s Health Insurance Marketplace

December 19th, 2014

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Governor O’Malley announced today that Maryland Health Connection, the state-based health insurance marketplace for individuals, families and small businesses, enrolled 136,685 individuals from the start of open enrollment onNov. 15 to last night’s deadline for coverage that begins Jan. 1.

That total includes 79,987 people signed up for private Qualified Health Plans (QHPs). More than three-quarters of QHP enrollees, or 61,448, are eligible for an Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) — upfront financial assistance to reduce their monthly insurance premiums. An additional 56,698 have enrolled in Medicaid since Nov. 15 through Maryland Health Connection. Open enrollment continues through Feb. 15, 2015.

(sigh) This is gonna be a lonnnng month for me...

MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31

MNsure sent this bulletin at 12/19/2014 11:34 AM CST

December 19, 2014

MNSURE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31
Decision follows transfer of enrollment information to insurance carriers and aligns enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage

ST. PAUL, Minn.—In an effort to provide more time for Minnesotans who qualify for financial help available only through MNsure, the organization today announced it would extend the enrollment deadline to December 31 for January 1 coverage.

Minnesotans must now enroll in coverage through MNsure by noon on Wednesday, December 31, to have their coverage effective on January 1, 2015. The change comes at a time of high interest in MNsure and as many health insurance companies recently extended their own enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage.

DON'T DELAY, ACT NOW!!

Margot Sanger-Katz has a fascinating story today about the "woodworker" effect in non-expansion states. I've written about woodworkers many times before; the short version is, these are people who were already eligible for Medicaid even before/without the ACA expansion provisions, but who never actually enrolled in the program for any number of reasons. Their reasons could be personal (embarrassment/shame over taking a "handout"), it could be because they didn't know that they were eligible (the rules vary from state to state), it could be because the enrollment process is too confusing (again, not an easy process in some states).

From the report:

  • The 51 states (including the District of Columbia) that provided enrollment data for October 2014 reported nearly 68.5 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. This enrollment count is point-in-time (on the last day of the month) and includes all enrollees in the Medicaid and CHIP programs who are receiving a comprehensive benefit package.
  • 428,311 additional people were enrolled in October 2014 as compared to September 2014 in the 51 states that reported comparable September and August data.

(And yes, the "51 states" wording is CMS's, not mine)

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