This is a guest post by Paul Mullen, Consultant Economist, Austin, TX; former Economic Advisor to the UK Minister for Local Government, Minister for Housing & Secretary for the Environment:
I would love to believe RAND's estimated 8.2 million increase in ESI between September and March but my experience in commissioning similar polls suggests to me that it is not real but due to an unanticipated side effect of the poll methodology.
We know that there is a pretty large "churn" in insurance status. Some people will gain jobs with insurance, while others lose them. Some people retire, get sick, or die. But one would expect the number gaining and losing employer coverage would be about equal. RAND's 8.2 million increase is the difference between 14.5 million estimated to have gained employer sponsored insurance and 6.3 million estimated to have lost it (with an estimated 102.4 million having employer coverage in both polls).
Yesterday I posted a poll asking whether people found the term "woodworker" (used to describe new Medicaid enrollees who were already eligible to be enrolled even without the expansion provisions of the ACA) to be offensive. The thinking is that "woodworker" makes it sound like you're an insect creeping around under the floorboards and so forth; not the prettiest image.
Anyway, the poll is now closed, and the results are in...out of 505 votes total:
83% felt that I should keep using the term "woodworker" enrollees
10% felt that I should switch to the friendlier-sounding "welcome mat" enrollees
7% felt that I should use some other term
This led to a robust discussion about what seems to be a pretty minor issue, but apparently means a lot to people. Other suggestions included:
I'm debating whether to actually plug this number into the spreadsheet or not. On the one hand, I'm reluctant to do so without hard official numbers being given (this is just a survey, only runs through mid-March and doesn't include kids anyway).
On the other hand, doing so wouldn't change my total projection of around 7.78 million exchange QHPs; it just reduces the "unsorted" number at the bottom. Plus, I'm almost certain that the March HHS report is going to be released sometime tomorrow (Thursday) anyway, so if I'm wrong, it'll be easy enough to correct it at that point.
“Let me tell you what we’re doing (about ObamaCare),” Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens bragged to a crowd of fellow Republicans in Floyd County earlier this month: “Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”
After pausing to let applause roll over him, a grinning Hudgens went on to give an example of that obstructionist behavior, this one involving so-called “navigators” who are being hired to guide customers through the process of buying health insurance on marketplaces, or exchanges, set up under the federal program.
Washington State is doing a fantastic job of tracking pretty much every data point about health insurance in the state (I already had the 146K number):
OLYMPIA, Wash. – The individual health insurance market has grown to more than 324,900 people in Washington state, according to updated enrollment information reported by health insurers to the Office of the Insurance Commissioner this week.
This number includes 178,981 enrolled outside the Exchange and 146,000 enrolled inside the Exchange, Washington Healthplanfinder, as of March 31. The total is expected to increase as late enrollments through the Exchange are processed and reconciled.
...Before open enrollment began on Oct. 1, 2013, approximately 278,000 people were enrolled in health plans in Washington state’s individual market. Some 238,000 people received discontinuation notices from their insurers and had to find new coverage by Jan. 1, 2014. Estimates were made earlier this year that 113,000 of those who received notices would qualify for subsidies and 30,000 would qualify for the state’s newly expanded Medicaid program, Apple Health.
Avera reported about 8,950 South Dakotans had both enrolled in its plans and paid their first premiums since the enrollment period began in October. Sanford reported 1,443 and DakotaCare 59. The total is 10,450, but the government relaxed the March 31 deadline and some enrollments are still coming in. The insurers also have some applicants who enrolled but didn't complete the purchase by paying their first premiums.
Avera, in earlier phone surveys, found that 54 percent of enrollments effective in January and February were people without coverage. Avera is studying the issue further and is working with Augustana College to explore what consumers care about most in a decision to buy.
Read that carefully--54% of the January and February-start policies were previously uninsured. That means people who enrolled between 10/1/13 - 1/15/14. All indications (and logic) are that those who enrolled later than mid-January are more likely to be newly-insured than the earlier enrollees.
I can't really use this number in the spreadsheet since it's less than the total for the state, but this is extremely telling news (besides, how often am I gonna get to post a Texas-specific entry?):
HOUSTON (AP) — More than 177,000 Houston residents have signed up for health insurance through the federal marketplace, far exceeding expectations for the city.
According to an email obtained by The Associated Press, as of April 5 177,825 Houston residents enrolled for insurance under President Barack Obama's signature law. The email was written by Marjorie McColl Petty, the regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Dallas.
The expectation had been that 138,000 Houston residents would sign up. Petty told Houston officials the numbers reflect a successful 13-county regional effort.
The quotes around "final" are there because DC also announced that they're bumping out the extension period one more time, to April 30th:
The exchange had 699 people enroll for coverage in the two weeks after open enrollment was originally supposed to close, with 22 percent of those signups coming on Tuesday, the final possible day. That brings the total number of private health coverage enrollments to 10,630, Medicaid signups to 19,217, and small business enrollments to 13,118.
A bunch of people have sent me this link to the latest Gallop poll, which is certainly welcome news but isn't exactly unexpected:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The uninsured rate among adults aged 18 and older in the states that have chosen to expand Medicaid and set up their own exchanges in the health insurance marketplace has declined significantly more this year than in the remaining states that have not done so. The uninsured rate, on average, declined 2.5 percentage points in the 21 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have implemented both of these measures, compared with a 0.8-point drop across the 29 states that have taken only one or neither of these actions.
