Way back on March 21st (wow, that seems like forever ago, doesn't it?), I posted the following towards the end of "The Paid/Unpaid Brouhaha":
So, I'll say this here and now:
Whatever percentage of total exchange-based QHP enrollments still haven't been paid by the policyholder as of May 31st should indeed be subtracted from the official HHS total number, assuming that those non-payments are due to either a) the policyholder bailing/refusing to pay or b) the government-run exchange (not the insurance company's billing system) screwing up.
If the total number ends up being 6.2 million but the non-payments fitting these criteria are 7% as of May 31st, I'll gladly subtract 434,000 from the total. If the total number is 6.5M and the non-payments are 10% as of 5/15, I'll subtract 650,000, and so on.
Well, it's not quite May 31st, but I wanted to make sure to get this blog entry off my chest before June 1st, so I'm giving the Republican Party a 4-day lead time.
OK, according to the March/April HHS report, Colorado's official QHP tally as of 4/19 was 125,402. However, according to the state exchange itself, the tally as of 4/15 (the actual end of open enrollment) was 127,233. I'm not sure whether the difference is due to purging unpaid enrollments, clerical errors on one side or the other or what, but they appear to have added either another 2,919 QHPs between 4/20 - 5/03, or another 1,088 between 4/16 - 5/03, depending on which starting number/date you use:
On May 25, 2014 you emailed me with the following request:
I am an insurance agent and in the communities I serve...south texas...San Antonio, Austin, we saw limited demand...so these numbers amaze me...can I advertise on your site...and reference you on my site?
I took a look at your website, and I'm a little confused. According to your site, the healthcare policies you offer are "not Obamacare compliant". There's technically no such thing as "Obamacare"...the actual name of the law is "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", generally shortened as "the Affordable Care Act." While "Obamacare is a popular nickname for the law, it's a bit troubling to see a supposedly professional insurance agency using slang terminology throughout the website.
Now that we're completely out of the Open Enrollment period (for QHPs, anyway), it'll be interesting to see how the QHP numbers climb based purely on Qualifying Life Events and Native American enrollees.
latest enrollment numbers
May 22, 2014
Medical Assistance 126,928
MinnesotaCare 46,662 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 50,759
TOTAL 224,349
Minnesota's final official number as of 4/22 (they bumped their extension period out an extra week from the normal 4/15) was 50,096, so they've added another 663 people in the first month since then, or around 1.3%.
Assuming that rate ends up being typical of both MN specifically and is representative nationally (and of course there's absolutely no evidence that either of these will be the case), this would mean:
Over the past 7 months, plenty of healthcare reporters, insurance executives and political pundits have started following this site and/or my Twitter feed. For the most part the ones I know of tend to be either of unknown ideology or left-leaning, but there's also a substantial number of Republican, Conservative, Libertarian or other wise right-leaning types, and that's fine.
I've butted heads publicly with a few of these folks. In some cases they've presented honest, intelligent disagreement; in others they've spewed tired, BS talking points. Here's a great opportunity to prove whether you're dealing an intellectually honest hand or not. I present you with the following:
MCCONNELL: KY. EXCHANGE UNCONNECTED TO HEALTH LAW
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell says he would try to repeal the Affordable Care Act if he's elected Senate majority leader.
But the veteran senator won't say what would happen to the 413,000 Kentuckians who have health insurance through the state's health care exchange.
McConnell told reporters Friday that the fate of the state exchange is unconnected to the federal health care law. Yet the exchange would not exist, if not for the law that created it.
I spent a lot of time the past couple of days hammering on the HHS Dept. for announcing that they're discontinuing their official monthly enrollment reports. However, it also occurs to me that I haven't heard a peep out of most of the state-run exchanges in almost a month either:
That's not me saying it; that's the actual headline and the conclusion of a report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation:
RENTON — The first look at the Affordable Care Act’s impact on New Jersey reveals the percentage of uninsured people is on track to reach its lowest level in nearly a quarter of a century, according to a new report released Thursday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The proportion of uninsured adults decreased 38 percent from September to early March, according to the foundation. That decline is likely to accelerate, knowing that many people waited until the last minute to beat the March 30 enrollment deadline.
"These findings suggest that uninsurance in New Jersey is at its lowest level since 1990," according to the report produced by the foundation and the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy.
After my back-to-back Cranky Screeds, this is a breath of fresh air.
Given the "How many have PAID???" fuss & bother, I've been debating how to handle an interesting number-crunching dilemma ever since the (final???) HHS report for March/part of April was released a few weeks back.
The question is this: When people ask "how many have paid?" their first month's premium, are they really interested in the percentage or in the actual number of people who are paid up?
This may seem like a curious distinction, but consider the following: Officially, the maximum total number which could potentially be "fully enrolled" (ie, premium paid) is 8,019,763. That's the number that the HHS Dept. listed in their last report, which runs through April 19th.
So, 90% of that number would be around 7.22 million, give or take.
Dear (outgoing Director) Kathleen Sebelius, (presumptive incoming Director) Sylvia Burwell, and whomever is in charge in between:
Your office is not supposed to be a political one. I, however, have the luxury of not being restricted by that fact. I'm a proud, unapologetically progressive Democrat. While I certainly have my issues with President Obama and the ACA, in general I think that it's an excellent start towards an eventual goal of a single payer healthcare system. While I'm still disapointed as to why they didn't simply drop the "65" age requirement from Medicare (perhaps phasing it in 5 years at a time...60, 55, 50 and so on, with an accompanying funding mechanism), or at the very least add a Public Option to compete with the private corporations, I do understand that the political realities at the time presumably didn't allow for either one.
