COVID19

Huh. Vermont's ACA exchange website, Vermont Health Connect, has looked pretty much the same for at least the past 5-6 years, but a month or so ago they quietly overhauled the layout & design interface of the site. I have no idea if they actually updated the back-end, however.

In any event, the VT Health Connect's COVID-19 Special Enrollment Period was originally supposed to end last Friday (May 14th), but they appear to have done something else without much fanfare as well:

 I've done my best to label every state/territory, which obviously isn't easy to do for most of them given how tangled it gets in the middle.

NOTE: I've recently updated the spreadsheet to account for the official 2020 Census Bureau populations of every state. In most cases this has nudged their case & mortality rates down slightly.

Nearly 1 out of every 7 residents of North Dakota, South Dakota and Rhode Island have tested positive for COVID-19 to date.

More than 1 out of every 8 residents of Iowa.

More than 1 out of every 9 residents of Tennessee, Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Arkansas.

More than 1 out of 10 in New Jersey, Indiana, Delaware, Alabama, Illinois, Florida, Mississippi, Kansas, New York, Minnesota, Georgia, Idaho, Nevada, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Montana, Texas and Kentucky.

More than 1 out of 20 in every state & territory EXCEPT Guam, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii, N. Mariana Islands & American Samoa.

The vaccination levels for each state below are based on taking the total number of COVID-19 doses administered to date according to the Centers for Disease Control), then and dividing that into double the state population (since each person needs two doses to be fully vaccinated) as of April 2020 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

I then adjust each state by counting the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine twice (since it's effectively similar to getting 2 Pfizer or Moderna doses).

UPDATE 5/21/21: The first few times I did this, I estimated J&J at 3.5% for every state; since then I've found that the CDC does provide the exact number of each type of vaccine for every state...it ranges from as low as 1.9% in Hawaii to as high as 6.5% in Maine, which is kind of interesting. The later graphs at the bottom have been adjusted to reflect this.

With this morning's confirmation of my post from Saturday that over 1 million more people have enrolled in ACA exchange coverage via HC.gov during the ongoing COVID Special Enrollment Period, I was reminded of a headline I wrote back in March:

Exclusive: Official 2021 #ACA Open Enrollment Period Hits 12.0 Million QHPs For First Time Since 2017

At the time I only had estimated 2021 Open Enrollment Period (OEP) data for several states, but my estimate was confirmed a couple of weeks ago when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the official 2021 OEP report, which states that the official total number of ACA Qualified Health Plan (QHP) selections for 2021 was 12,004,365 people.

A week ago I noted that my year-long tracking of COVID-19 cases and deaths along partisan lines has proven to be very much justified, as recent headlines in major news outs have proven:

Nearly half of Republicans say they don’t want a Covid vaccine, a big public health challenge.

But more than two in five Republicans said they would avoid getting vaccinated if possible, suggesting that President Biden has not succeeded in his effort to depoliticize the vaccines — and leaving open the question of whether the country will be able to achieve herd immunity without a stronger push from Republican leaders to bring their voters on board.

‘I’m still a zero’: Vaccine-resistant Republicans warn that their skepticism is worsening

As I noted recently, I've relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.

For total monthly Medicaid enrollment, the official Medicaid.gov monthly enrollment data is only available dating back to late 2013, and it's only current through November 2020. The Kaiser Family Foundation has also compiled the pre-2014 average enrollment for each state based on the 3rd quarter of 2013. In some states I've been able to find more recent enrollment data for December 2020 or later.

A picture is worth 1,000 words and all that.

I've done my best to label every state/territory, which obviously isn't easy to do for most of them given how tangled it gets in the middle.

NOTE: I've recently updated the spreadsheet to account for the official 2020 Census Bureau populations of every state. In most cases this has nudged their case & mortality rates down slightly.

Nearly 1 out of every 7 residents of North Dakota, South Dakota and Rhode Island have tested positive for COVID-19 to date.

More than 1 out of every 9 residents of Iowa, Tennessee, Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Arkansas.

More than 1 out of 10 in New Jersey, Indiana, Delaware, Mississippi, Kansas, Alabama, Illinois, Florida, New York, Georgia, Idaho, Wisconsin, Nevada, Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana and Texas.

More than 1 out of 20 in every state & territory EXCEPT Guam, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, U.S. Virgin Islands, Hawaii, N. Mariana Islands & American Samoa.

A few days ago, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted an updated report on the number of Americans who have selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through HealthCare.Gov, which hosts ACA enrollment for 36 states during the ongoing COVID Special Enrollment Period (SEP) which began on February 15th and is set to continue through August 15th in most states.

In addition to the 940,000 QHPs via the federal exchange (HC.gov) from 2/15 through 4/30, I've compiled officlal SEP enrollment numbers for several of the states which operate their own ACA exchanges as well:

• Colorado: 17,282 from 2/08 - 5/05
• Connecticut: 5,890 from 2/15 - 4/15
• Idaho: 3,600 from 3/01 - 3/31
• Maryland: 15,150 from 1/01 - 2/28
• Minnesota: 2,285 from 2/16 - 3/09
• Nevada: 6,908 from 2/15 - 5/06
• Pennsylvania: 11,126 from 2/15 - 3/25
• Washington: 1,700 from 2/15 - 2/23

The total of these, plus the 940,000 via HC.gov, comes to 1,003,516 confirmed so far.

There's no formal press release yet, but I've confirmed that the Nevada Health Link ACA exchange has enrolled 6,908 additional Nevadans in ACA exchange coverage via the COVID Special Enrollment Period as of yesterday (5/06) so far.

This breaks out to around 85 per day from 2/15 - 5/06.

Unfortunately, I don't have Nevada's 2019 or 2020 SEP enrollment handy for comparison, but NV's statewide population (3.10) is right in between Arkansas (3.03 million) and Iowa (3.19 million), which at least allows for a rough comparison:

This strongly suggests that Nevada's 85/day average is perhap 2.5x higher than 2019 and perhaps twice as high as 2020, although 2020 is a fuzzier comparison since HC.gov didn't have a COVID SEP last year while the Nevada Health Link did.

In addition to the 940,000 Americans who have enrolled in ACA coverage across the 36 states hosted by HealthCare.Gov to date during the COVID Special Enrollment Period, Connect for Health Colorado just announced that the Centennial State has enrolled over 17,200 more people via their own COVID SEP:

DENVER — 17,282 Coloradans have signed up for a health insurance plan since Connect for Health Colorado re-opened enrollment on Feb. 8, with more than 7,500 sign ups in the last month alone. That uptick in enrollments coincides with the date that Connect for Health Colorado began offering increased savings on health insurance to residents of all income ranges following the passage of the American Rescue Plan.

Hmmm...I know they say "7,500 in the past month", but they reported 9,971 as of 4/07, so that should mean 7,311 in the past month. Huh.