For California, we presently have data through the December 23rd. However, at the last minute, California extended its deadline to 12/27. This means that we are still waiting for four days of enrollment data! Keep in mind that just prior to the deadline, California was seeing 20,000 private plan enrollments daily.
It that rate continued unabated, we could be looking at as much as 80,000 signups beyond the 428,000 already registered. During the three days December 20–22nd more than 77,000 Californians enrolled in private plans. Granted, this is speculation – we won’t know until Covered California releases its figures.
One key question that I ask myself is this: For which states are we still waiting for data that may change the number of insured as of January 1st 2014? And how much of a change is possible? The various states offered different extensions. From the spreadsheet, we see that the California data is current only through 12/23. Likewise Washington, Connecticut and Nevada. We can also expect to see a significant movement in Vermont (current data is only through 12/11 plus one additional day).
Given this, I will be very surprised if we don’t add at least another 100,000 enrollments to the total, surpassing 2.25 million private plan signups.
Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have been operating their own exchanges, with varying degrees of success. At the end of 2013, the best 12 of these account for more than 950,000 enrollments in private insurance plans. In the table, the states are rated by performance, as measured by fulfillment of their enrollment targets.
In 2012, more than 50 million Americans lacked any form of health insurance. The Affordable Care Act was enacted into law in order to reduce that number. This website aims to give an accurate picture of how much.
In April this year, after the six-month open enrollment period has ended, it will be interesting to examine the statistics. Foremost among those numbers, in the minds of political pundits, will be how many Americans enrolled in private health plans? We will then know whether we reached, surpassed or fell short of the 7,066,000 enrollments projected by the Congressional Budget Office – long since elevated to a “target” rather than the projection it was.
How many more people are insured?
As we start this new year, at least 2.1 million people will be covered by new private plans, roughly 30 % of CBO’s first-year projection. However, this is by no means the only key figure. More than 4 million people are embraced by the Medicaid expansion. In addition, an estimated 3.1 young adults are now insured though their parents’ health plans. That adds up to 9.2 million people, which is a respectable start and should significantly reduce the number of uninsured. However, it must be underscored that many complex factors make it impossible to quantify that reduction, at least for the time being.
On top of that are an unknown number of people who have purchased ACA-compliant insurance plan off-exchange, i.e. directly from the insurance company. There are strong indications that total is significant – and we’ll return to that issue.
