One more update in Oregon, and it's a substantial one despite their severe technical issues: The Oregonian reports a 22% increase in state signups , from the previous totals of 14,700 private and 32,000 Medicaid enrollments. Journalist Nick Budnick, who has written numerous articles on the Oregon health exchange’s non-functioning website, also confirms the correctness of the additional Medicaid figure.
The final tally on enrollment through Oregon's health exchange by Jan. 1 topped 50,000, according to Cover Oregon. More than 18,000 people enrolled in commercial or private insurance, according to Cover Oregon spokesman Michael Cox, while more than 32,000 people enrolled in the Medicaid-funded Oregon Health Plan.
...The exchange's enrollment figure does not include more than 100,000 people who were enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan using a streamlined process set up by the state to bypass Cover Oregon.
It was just brought to my attention that there's a story in today's L.A. Times that mentions my name and this site several times. Given that the site has received quite an uptick in traffic and attention the past week or so, I just wanted to welcome new visitors, ask you to please read the FAQ and also stress a few additional points:
No, I don't guarantee that my numbers are accurate. I'm fairly confident of them, but my data is only as good as that of my sources, which are a variety of local & national news media websites as well as official state & federal government reports/media releases. If their data is wrong, mine will be as well, though I do the best I can to double-check any numbers which seem suspicious.
A few of the spreadsheet cells are color-coded; scroll to the bottom of the page for explanations of those.
Other numbers are italicized; those are either verified as being unpaid or are otherwise questionable (Massachusetts has a pretty messed-up situation at the moment).
Numbers that don't have any source link mean that they come from the official monthly HHS Dept. report (whcih currently only runs through 11/30/13).
At the right side of the spreadsheet is a "Notes" column; I'm currently in the process of changing this to direct links to the corresponding blog entries about that state. This will help simplify the spreadsheet as well as allowing me to go into detailed explanations for the entries.
Massachusetts is a mess. I've been debating how to handle this; for private enrollments, it looks like I need to combine 497 subsidized, 3,262 unsubsidized (the previous number) and 22K temporary plans, which are apparently qualified/approved but haven't been processed yet. This adds up to 25,759 total, but the article refers to a lower number of 24,256. Given the confusion, I'm using that as the total and listing it below the other number in italics, which I normally use for "unpaid" enrollments. This brings the new tally to 3,759 fully enrolled and 20,497 "semi-enrolled"...I think.
The Medicaid number is more straightforward: 130K transferred automatically from a state-run public health program over to Medicaid proper.
As of Dec. 30, only 497 people had successfully enrolled in new subsidized health plans throughMassachusetts' health connector.
State officials have put another 22,000 people on temporary insurance plans, paid for by the state, while the connector processes coverage applications.
After last week's confusing numbers, Minnesota is back on track with private exchange enrollments increasing by 6,440 over a week earlier, or 33%. Enrollment in MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance went up to 15,997 and 25,948 respectively.
MNsure got through the first round of customer sign-ups, which had a Dec. 31 deadline. On Friday the agency reported that 67,805 Minnesotans had used the site to enroll in a health plan by year’s end. Some 25,860 consumers bought an individual plan on the commercial market, with the rest eligible for one of the publicly subsidized programs.MNsure said that 14,600 people signed up in the last four days of December, a last-minute burst that Leitz described as “an encouraging sign.”
Kentucky's enrollment continues to quietly but steadily increase, with private exchange enrollments up 5% over Christmas Eve (from 31,672 to 33,289) and Medicaid expansion up 7% (from 84,480 to 90,254). Ironically, for all the praise they receive for their exchange running so smoothly, KY is actually still only at about 15% of their CBO goal, mainly because it was set absurdly high in the first place (220,000, or slightly higher than New York which has a population 4.5x as large).
Maryland's latest tally has just been released. They went from 11,715 private enrollments on 12/21 to 18,257 as of 12/28, a whopping 55% increase in the final enrollment week. They also added another 13,000 people to Medicaid either via the exchange or transfers from the MD Primary Adult Care program.
Through December 28, 18,257 Marylanders have chosen to enroll in private health plans through Maryland Health Connection.
91,570 Marylanders signed up through the Primary Adult Care (PAC) program to be automatically enrolled in Medicaid coverage on January 1, 2014, and now have full Medicaid coverage. Separately, through December 28, 43,065 Marylanders have been found eligible for a Medicaid program through Maryland Health Connection. As of January 1, 19,578 of those individuals were enrolled in Medicaid, and we expect many more of those found eligible to be enrolled in the coming weeks, with coverage retroactive to January 1.
There's no specific breakdown given between private and public accounts, but the previous numbers were 14K and 24K, so I'm assuming the extra 2,000 are broken out in a similar 37/63 ratio. The article also reaffirms the 100,000 enrollments in the publicly-funded Oregon Health Plan.
The website still has not enrolled anyone, though roughly 40,000 have enrolled using the exchange's paper applications, and more than 100,000 have enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan using a system set up by the state in August to bypass the exchange.
It looks like my previous source for Colorado's Medicaid Expansion tally (114,192) was mistaking applications for actual enrollments. This number has been reduced by 27,760 as of 12/31/13.
In addition, in a previous entry I mentioned a study by the Commonwealth Fund from earlier this year which claimed that the correct number of "Under 26'ers" on their parent's plans thanks to the ACA is actually closer to 7.8 million instead of the 3.1 million figure that I've been using. However, I've been reluctant to switch to that figure since a) it's much larger and b) the HHS itself is only using the 3.1 million number. Today I found out why this is the case; contributor jdld provided a link to this report on the HHS website which states:
Colorado has increased their private total enrollment from 42,771 on Christmas Eve to 52,773 as of New Year's Eve.
Not too much to add here. This is significant not just because of the hard number, which is impressive and pushes CO ahead of their CBO enrollment schedule (92K by 3/31/14; they're 57% of the way there while the period is only 50.5% over), but because of the implication--the state extended their January enrollment deadline to 12/27, and managed to increase their tally by more than 23% in that last week. If this trend held true for other late-enrollment states, it could mean some nice last-minute mini-spikes.
On Christmas Day I posted "New ACA Attack: "But how many have actually PAID???" in which I pointed out that unless there prove to be significant technical issues preventing large numbers of premium payments from going through, this is pretty weak tea in terms of being an anti-ACA talking point...or at least it won't have any teeth to speak of until after January 10th, the date which most insurance companies have agreed to extend their January payment deadlines out to.
However, in the interest of completeness, I did point out that in at least one case (Washington State), the enrollment numbers are indeed broken out between paid and unpaid; specifically, 65,000 out of 134,000 total enrollments had been paid, or 48.5%. The next day, Nevada's numbers came out and once again, 49% (6,219 out of 12,740) were paid. So the short answer I gave at the time was "almost half of enrollees have paid."
