This naturally raised the question of whether the main Federal exchange website, Healthcare.gov, was also vulnerable. I checked the site the day that the Heartbleed story went public last Wednesday and it did not show up as being vulnerable. In addition, on that same day Mashable reported that HC.gov was NOT one of the major sites impactedby the bug.
However, just to be certain (and because, frankly, it's a good idea to reset your password every six months or so anyway), the HHS Dept. has taken the precaution of doing a batch password reset for every account on the site:
• 52,156: Vermonters who used the Vermont Health Connect website, call center or navigators to shop for 2013 health insurance and now have coverage.
• 24,888: Vermonters who purchased commercial coverage through Vermont Health Connect.
• 27,268: Vermonters who shopped on Vermont Health Connect but qualified and are now enrolled in Medicaid. Eligibility expanded under the federal Affordable Care Act.
• 33,549: Vermonters previously covered by the Vermont Health Access Program and Catamount Health who the state enrolled automatically in Medicaid based on income information on record.
It seems a bit odd to me that Maryland is issuing a formal press release today when their extension period doesn't end until tonight or tomorrow (why leave a couple days of stragglers?), but whatever; the increase in exchange QHPs from 4/09 to 4/14 was only 1,017, so I guess they figure that it won't be more than a few hundred from 4/15 - 4/18 anyway.
In any event, they say they aren't issuing any more updates until mid-May, so for all practical purposes, this closes the books on Maryland for now:
Please note, we will begin reporting on a monthly basis, on the third Friday of each month. Our next report will be May 16, 2014.
As of April 15, 2014, 262,619 individuals have gained Medicaid coverage in 2014 and remain active in Medicaid. This includes the 95,889 PAC enrollees who were automatically converted on January 1, 2014 to full Medicaid coverage.
As of April 14, 2014, 66,203 individuals have enrolled in a qualified health plan.
OK, now that we're past the April 15 cut-off period, I can close the books for 2014 enrollments, right?
Well, no. As I've noted many times before, Medicaid enrollments and SHOP (Small Business) enrollments are year-round; there's no deadline for those.
OK...but what about Exchange QHPs? Surely those are shut down for the year, right?
Well, no. Again, as I've noted before, the appx. 5 million Native Americans in the U.S. don't have a deadline, and of course anyone can still enroll or change plans if they have a Qualifying Life Event such as having a baby, getting married/divorced, losing their job, moving to a different state and so on.
OK...but what about everyone else? April 15th was the deadline, right?
Well, no. Here's a roundup of the state-by-state deadlines (which have been changing every day, but seem to have finally settled down for real):
According to a new policy paper by the UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, it is likely that up to half of California’s Exchange Enrollees will not be enrolled in their current Quality Health Plan’s (or QHP’s) by the end of the first year of the exchanges existence. This is due to a myriad of life factors allowing consumers to drop these plans for other policies afforded to them by their spouses, employers, or other government insurance providers (Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare etc.)
The S.C. Department of Insurance reported Friday that 114,789 individuals selected a plan on the federal exchange through April 15 - up from an 97,000 estimate earlier this month.
Today was filled with fantastic news across the board. Theonly bummer is that the actual HHS report for March (and the first half of April?), with the state-by-state breakdown, was not released today.
So, you know what? I'm so geeked about the 4/15 total actually breaking the big 8M mark after all that I'm going to attempt to estimate the state-by-state totals for every state which hasn't published their official 4/15 total yet myself.
This may sound insane, but it's not as difficult as you may think (well, it's not difficult to do; that doesn't mean that I'll be accurate).
First of all, I can obviously eliminate any state which has already released their data through 4/15. That gets rid of California, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Minnesota, Nevada, New York and Oregon.
I can also eliminated Washington State, since they never participated in the expansion period (they may have a few hundred stragglers via "special case-by-case basis" but that should be about it.
The wording of the story makes it look like MA's exchange QHP total dropped by over 6K, but in fact they had only reported 12,965 to HHS as of March 1st, so this still represents a slight increase over the last number entered on 4/02 (29,720):
Unsubsidized enrollment in exchange plans fell to 29,775 April 8, from 36,060 Dec. 1, 2013, when the state had its own, homegrown exchange plan program in place. The exchange is planning to conduct a survey to learn why enrollment fell.
deaconblues, ever detail-oriented, also made sure to find the subsidized number of QHP enrollees as well: 769
This number out of NC is a bit squirrelly; I'm not updating the actual spreadsheet with it, but it's still worth at least mentioning:
Overall, Terrell said, the state has received 95,000 Medicaid applications via the federal ACA sign-up, representing 132,000 people, since October 2013. And that number is likely to grow.
The number of people added to Medicaid/CHIP in NC thru 3/01 via the HC.gov site was 55,691, so this could potentially be a more than 2.3x increase, but they're noted as applications, so presumably some of them will be denied. Still impressive.
Earlier in the week I noted that 
