This afternoon I was contacted by Erik Wemple, a writer for the Washington Post, to discuss a story about the elusive enrollment data from the HHS Dept. Yes, Sec. Burwell did give out some general First Day metrics on Sunday morning: 500K people logging on, 100K submitting applications. However, that's not the key number that people (including myself, of course) are most interested in.
Unfortunately, I was on the other line at the time (with someone from a different media outlet, as it happens), and I had to pick my kid up from school after that, and wasn't able to get back to the Wemple in time. I guess he had a tight deadline to meet, because shortly thereafter, his story ran:
Those disclosures are fine as far as they go. But Bloomberg health-care reporter Alex Wayne suggests that the data release follow a more systematic format:
Massachusetts is issuing daily updates on traffic at its #Obamacare exchange. http://HealthCare.Gov can't do this because ... umm ... hrm.
New York (MainStreet) -- With Obamacare open enrollment under way for next year, Americans continue to oppose the Affordable Care Act even as new data reveals that many of us don't even know what's in it.
A recent survey, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, asked ten questions about health insurance under the ACA. Nearly 40% of participants got half of the questions wrong, with 8% getting nothing right at all.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – A new report released Monday by Universal Health Care Action Network of Ohio (UHCAN) is sharing the challenges people faced during the first open enrollment period through the Affordable Care Act, and is providing suggestions on how to improve access, especially for people living in communities of color.
Based on the findings of the report, conducted with the think tank PolicyBridge and funded by the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation, UHCAN is recommending that enrollment navigators and other assisters be more available and accessible in neighborhood and community-based sites. The network is also recommending that follow-up services be provided for people new to insurance, not only to help connect them with a primary care provider, but to make sure they know how to use that insurance.
I'm not sure whether the 306 "new coverage applications" refer to actual enrollments or not; going by my own post yesterday, I'll assume not until I hear confirmation otherwise:
The exchange processed 32 new coverage applications by 11:30 a.m., officials reported. By the close of business Monday, that number climbed to 306.
“We have not had any problems reported today,” said Lawrence Miller, chief of Health Care Reform, on Sunday.
...The exchange processed 1,515 renewals as of Monday evening. Those are a mix of people who submitted changes early and those being automatically reenrolled in their current plans.
For comparison, last year Vermont only had 38,000 QHP enrollees total.
Update: I've confirmed that, as I suspected, the 306 "new applications" are just that, not necessarily actual enrollments.
I was geeked beyond measure when I was told that the all-new Massachusetts Health Connector would be posting daily enrollment reports. Until now, the only state doing this was Minnesota, and they only started doing so (I think) after the end of the first open enrollment period (or close to it).
Sure enough, they've already posted two "dashboard reports" with metrics showing how many Bay Staters had been determined eligible for Medicaid ("MassHealth") as well as the different types of Qualified Health Plans (QHPs), which are broken out into those paying full price, those receiving tax credits (APTC) and those qualifying for "ConnectorCare" which seems to be some sort of special Massachusetts-specific program which is somewhere between the Arkansas "Private Medicaid Option" and Minnesota's "MinnesotaCare" Basic Healthcare Program...except that the "ConnectorCare" enrollees are still categorized as "QHPs" for enrollment purposes.
The reports give daily tallies of how many accounts are created and how many applications are submitted, along with call volume, website traffic and forth.
Yes, I know what you're saying: This is either a joke or a typo; how could Maryland be launching open enrollment a day early when 2015 #OE2 actually started 3 days ago?? Shouldn't that read "3 days late"?
Well, no, actually. As I noted back in September, due to the horrible technical problems which the MD Health Connection had with their original platform last year, they wisely decided to be extremely cautious this time around with their all-new software.
In short, instead of opening the floodgates all at once on the 15th, MD decided to take a phased approach:
Yes, I realize it's kind of stupid to post The Graph when there's barely anything to Graph yet, but I wanted to set the stage for 2015 #OE2. As you can see, I'm doing it in a much cleaner, more organized way this time--the timeline includes the entire open enrollment period (which is less awkward to do this year since it's only 3 months instead of 6).
I've also overlaid projection lines to show roughly how I expect the QHP enrollment pattern to go--an initial "mini-surge", then a massive spike as the December 15th deadline approaches (anyone who's already enrolled who auto-renews or manually switches to a different policy will be part of this, since they don't want to have a coverage gap in January). I'm assuming roughly 7 million QHPs by 12/15 (or possibly a few days later...it's my understanding that some state exchanges are using 12/18 as the cut-off for January 1st?).
Then things should level out a bit from mid-December until mid-January because all the autorenewals will be accounted for (not to mention the holiday season). I'm figuring perhaps 1 million more; these folks will have coverage starting on February 1st.
OK, this one is a bit vague, but for the moment I'll take it. "Land of Lincoln Health" is an insurance CO-OP which operates, as you'd imagine from the name, in Illinois. I'm fairly certain that's the only state they operate in, so this number should be restricted to IL:
Land of Lincoln has enrolled “several hundred people” since open enrollment began this past Saturday, and the plan is already receiving payments from consumers, said Dorgan, who is in charge of finding and renewing members. About 6,000 people visited Land of Lincoln's website over the weekend with no apparent technology issues—an auspicious start for a plan that hopes to have 50,000 covered lives for 2015.
For the moment I'll assume "several hundred" means "300 - 400" and will go with 350 until better data comes out.
This is excellent news for another reason as well: Land of Lincoln only scored about 2,500 enrollees for 2014 open enrollment, so they're at something like 14% of their entire 2014 number in just 2 days.
