More state exchange numbers are starting to trickle in...
The state Cabinet for Health and Human Services said in a release that as of 4 p.m. Saturday, there had been 6,200 unique visitors to the Kynect Web site; 2,415 calls handled by the Kynect contact center; 504 applications submitted; and 368 individuals who had newly enrolled in a qualified health plan.
In addition, 70 visitors to the Kynect store at Fayette Mall in Lexington had completed 33 applications for new coverage.
The "newly enrolled" is important as well, to distinguish it from current enrollees renewing their policies. Hopefully all of the exchanges will be sure to clarify this, but...
Top contributor deaconblues is back in action with three updates today: First up, Hawaii:
HONOLULU — Hawaii's health insurance exchange enrolled more than 40 people on the first day clients were able to sign up to be covered next year.
Another 60 applied for financial assistance to pay for premiums as of mid-afternoon, Jeffrey Kissel, the CEO of Hawaii Health Connector, said Saturday.
The insurance exchange expected to serve over 1,000 clients, either online, over the phone or in person by the time it closed for the day at 8 p.m.
As db notes, and as I noted in my Vermont/Massachusetts post this morning, the numbers may be tiny but it's symbolically very important, especially for the exchanges which had so many technical problems last year. Hawaii didn't get nearly as much press as OR, NV, MA, VT or MD, but they did have severe problems as well.
Combine that with the fact that it's such a small state which already had such a low uninsured population to begin with, and enrolling "only" 40 people or so on Day One is still an important starting point for their 2015 narrative.
I just posted about the first official enrollment numbers coming in from Day One of the 2015 Open Enrollment Period, with small but symbolically important numbers from Vermont and Massachusetts.
I also noted the following passage from today's Boston Globe story about it:
As of 6:30 p.m., 5,967 people had used the Connector website (MAhealthconnector.org) to find out what type of plan they were eligible for.
Of them 2,660 enrolled in MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, according to Haberlin, who is senior adviser to Maydad Cohen, the governor’s special assistant for project delivery.
The remaining 3,307 learned they were eligible to shop for a private health insurance. Of those, 1,704 selected a plan and 60 paid online (which is not required until Dec. 23).
So, you have 1,704 actually enrolling ("selecting a plan"), of which--GASP!!--only 60 have paid!!
OK, the numbers are small, but it's a start--and the fact that both are being released by states which had horrible technical issues last year is quite telling:
Vermont Health Connect processed 50 new applications and 201 renewals by Saturday at 1 p.m. The exchange was working well with some isolated minor issues in the morning that were quickly resolved, he said.
MASSACHUSETTS: 1,704 in first day:
#ACA coverage update: 2,660 enrolled in @MassHealth; 3,307 eligible for @HealthConnector coverage with 1,704 plans selected. Total: 5,967
I've rantedseveral times before about the importance of current Obamacare private policy enrollees making sure to actually visit the exchange website, shop around, log into your account and manually re-enroll for 2015, even if nothing has changed at your end (ie, no changes in income, dependents, residence etc).
There are many reasons NOT to auto-renew, most of which are financial in nature. The short version is, you could easily end up paying more than you thought next year by not switching (in addition to premium changes, your tax credit might drop even if your income hasn't changed due to how it's calculated), and you could pay substantially less next year if you do switch to another policy (premiums are actually dropping in many markets).
OK, I'm as geeked as any ACA supporter, but some context and clarification is important here. Last year there was a lot of confusion about the distinction between someone:
creating an account
submitting an application
selecting/committing to a plan, and
paying their first month's premium.
The 8.02 million figure through April 19th touted by the administration last spring represented 3) Selecting a plan.
Of that, the actual number who followed through and 4) paid their first premium (thus activating--or "effectuating" to use the industry lingo--their policy) ended up being roughly 88%, or around 7.1 million.
Yes, I know, I know: Who wouldn't want to spend an hour watching Andrew Sprung (aka xpostfactoid1) and myself discuss the minutiae of the 2015 Open Enrollment Period, my projections from the other day and the design/usability improvements at Healthcare.Gov?? Contain yourselves, people!!
(OK, OK, you don't have to watch the full hour--it's broken into 5-8 minute snippets)
However, I can say that based on my (very limited) poking around the web, it appears that not only is Healthcare.Gov doing fine, so are most of the state-run exchanges...except for two of them (and not the ones you'd think):
California: I heard anecdotal evidence that CoveredCA was having some significant issues on opening day, but it wasn't until I checked their Twitter feed and saw a series of posts like this that I grew concerned:
Washington State: The WAHealthplan Finder issued this notice this afternoon:
Status Updates & Maintenance Schedule
November 15, 2014
During the first open enrollment period, the official data releases from the various exchanges ranged all over the place.
HHS, of course, only issued monthly reports, without giving any official data in between (that is, until the numbers started looking good, at which point they issued milestone press releases of "3 million", "5 million" and so on, although even then they didn't give exact numbers or dates).
Some of the state exchanges stuck with monthly numbers as well (Colorado), while others gave out data roughly weekly (Nevada, via Twitter), bi-weekly, or whenever they happened to feel like it (most of the other states). As things ramped up towards March/April, some states started issuing regular weekly updates (including Oregon, which is ironic given all of their technical problems).
Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether "processed completed applications" means actual enrollments or just accounts created. Presumably HHS will provide better clarity on this sort of language (and quickly) going forward. Plus, of course, a single policy enrollment could have 2, 3 or more people in a household.
However, I'm happy to report the very first official enrollment update is also already available, and it's out of Vermont, one of the states with a highly-troubled exchange last time around!
California: I heard anecdotal evidence that CoveredCA was having some significant issues on opening day, but it wasn't until I checked their Twitter feed and saw a series of posts like this that I grew concerned:
