So, a lot of people, including myself, have talked quite a bit about the people who had their pre-2014 insurance policies cancelled due to them not being compliant with one or more of the requirements of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (one of the few times I've used the full name, I might add). And yes, those people absolutely do exist; I know, because (as I've noted many times before), I was one of them. My wife and I received one of those "scary" cancellation notices last fall (nothing scary about it...just a simple note saying, "Your current policy isn't compliant with the law, so it'll end as of 12/31/13...we invite you to replace it with a new policy which is compliant with the law."
Whoops...apparently I was wrong about Hawaii not joining in with most other states on the "finish by 4/15 if you started by 3/31" bandwagon. Thanks to deaconblues for the catch:
Total since October 1, 2013
28,374 Applications completed in the Individual Marketplace 7,788 QHP Enrollments in the Individual Marketplace
557 Employers applied to SHOP Marketplace 269 QHP Enrollments from the SHOP Marketplace
4 different people brought Minnesota's latest update to my attention...their exchange QHPs are up another 651 from 47,046 since 3/31, while their Medicaid tally is up another 5,655 from 128,005:
ST.PAUL, Minn. – Today, MNsure announced 181,357 Minnesotans have enrolled in quality, affordable coverage through MNsure, the state’s health insurance marketplace. The growing numbers come from continued processing of “in line” applications, as well as Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare enrollments.
...To date, MNsure has enrolled 47,697 Minnesotans in a Qualified Health Plan, 37,050 in MinnesotaCare and 96,610 in Medical Assistance.
Until today, I had The Graph broken into 7 distinct categories:
Exchange-Based Individual QHPs (Paid or To Be Paid Soon)
Exchange-Based Individual QHPs (Unpaid or May Not Pay)
OFF-Exchange Individual QHPs
Exchange-Based SHOP (Sm. Biz) QHPs
Medicaid/CHIP (Strict Expansion)
Medicaid/CHIP (Woodworkers)
Sub26ers (Low Est. / High Est.)
Yesterday, however, the release of the RAND Corp. Survey made me realize that I was handling the 3rd category (OFF-Exchange Individual QHPs) the wrong way.
You see, in the rare cases where I had access to the off-exchange enrollments for a particular company, I mushed their individual and group policies together. The numbers weren't huge--only about 34,000 people--but the potential numbers, as the RAND survey indicated, could potentially be massive.
This is great news for two reasons...not only has the Michigan Medicaid expansion already shot up another 5K in just the past day or two, but at least 20,000 ("tens of thousands") more people have been added to the Medicaid tally due to bulk transfers (similar to the 650K LIHP transfers in CA, 107K Commonwealth Care transfers in MA and so on):
The Healthy Michigan program has received nearly 55,000 applications since April first. 32,000 Michiganders have already had their applications approved. And tens of thousands more have been moved into the expanded Medicaid program from a different state health assistance program.
700K to 1.3M Additional Medicaid Enrollees through March, If Current Trends Continue.
However, March and April figures could bring more dramatic increases if outreach and enrollment efforts targeting the end of exchange open enrollment translate into new Medicaid enrollees. Specifically, if Medicaid sign-ups follow a similar pattern as exchanges, new Medicaid enrollees could reach 4.3 million by the end of March. In addition, recent figures released by CMS do not account for individuals assessed eligible for Medicaid through HealthCare.gov who have yet to be determined eligible by states.
For anyone interested, I'm scheduled to appear on the Craig Fahle Show tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at around 10:00am. The show is broadcast from WDET, 101.9 FM in Detroit. No idea what the rebroadcast schedule is but I assume it'll be available as a podcast archive at some point.
Meanwhile, my appearance on Left Jab Radio on Sunday night, complete with my son bursting into the room in the middle of the broadcast, is now available via their website. My segment kicks in around 14:45 in and lasts about 20 minutes, I think.
Finally, I've been hesitant about posting this publicly since there may be copyright issues involved (I'll take it down if necessary), but this strikes me as a reasonable/fair use situation (besides, I tried contacting the producer and no one ever got back to me); my apperance on America Tonight from about 2 weeks ago is now available via YouTube:
Everything else is secondary. Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation wins the day.
Having said that, I'm still not understanding this "3.9 million now covered" number, however, when the number covered thru "mid-March" was actually around 4.9 million:
By our estimate, 3.9 million people are now covered through the state and federal marketplaces. This number is lower than current estimates of marketplace enrollment through the end of March from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), perhaps because some of the HROS data were collected in early March. All HROS data collection reported here ended on March 28, and therefore missed the last three days of the open enrollment period, during which time there was a surge in enrollment.
As noted earlier, the only way 3.9M makes sense to me is if they assumed an 80% Paid rate, which would have been about right at that time.
At last, the big RAND Survey that everyone was freaking out about (and in some cases, completely misinterpreting) has actually been released!
The key numbers:
Using a survey fielded by the RAND American Life Panel, we estimate a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014.
The net result, according to RAND? An overall drop in the adult uninsured rate from 20.5% to 15.8%, or around 9.3M people nationally.
Put another way, the survey estimates that the share of uninsured American adults has dropped over the measured period from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent. Among those gaining coverage, most enrolled through employer-sponsored coverage or Medicaid.
Assuming the RAND study is accurate (and most people from both sides of the aisle seem to think it's a pretty solid source), we may finally have an answer to the question "How many of them were UNINSURED???" Answer? Around 36%...of the first 3.9 million enrolled! That's right: Their study doesn't even include the 3.2 million more people who enrolled in individual QHPs via the exchanges after the survey concluded!
The New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange (NMHIX) reported a total of 26,412 New Mexicans had enrolled in qualified health plans as of March 31, 2014, according to the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance. This figure represents a 76 percent growth rate from the 15,012 enrollments confirmed at the end of February 2014.
In addition, as noted this morning, NM reports 11K OFF-exchange individual QHPs and another 13,500 off-exchange SHOP QHPs! The 11K are part of the alleged "9M" RAND QHPs, not sure how to handle the 13.5K SHOP QHPs, not that it makes much of a difference vs. 9M...
