NOTE: I've decided to start posting my "Nightly Update" newsletters here on the site itself, since they sometimes are basically full posts themselves. Case in point...
As I noted this morning, between a serious backlog with my website clients (that's right, this isn't supposed to be my day job) and the fact that just about all of the state exchanges are updated to within the past few days, it was pretty light posting today. There were a few notable developments, however:
MA's deadline for January coverage isn't until Tuesday the 23rd, so they've been holding pretty steady, although the numbers are definitely moving up gradually (note that they did have a mini-spike on Monday as well). Speaking of January enrollment deadlines...
- Maryland's Deadline is Tonight at Midnight!
I didn't post anything about this beyond highlighting MD on the home page of the site, but it's worth noting, since I'm assuming they'll have a Big Press Release tomorrow with their total numbers.
For comparison, they reported 61K QHPs (and 41.9K Medicaid additions) as of 12/15. To reach the HHS's "30% over 2014" target, they'll have to hit 88K by February 15th, or 101K to reach my own "50% over 2014" target for Maryland, so they're doing very well so far.
Also, remember that unlike most states, Maryland is not set up with an "autorenewal" plan (well, technically they are, but enrollees will lose their tax credits if they do it that way, which amounts to the same thing for about 85% of the current enrollees).
There were two other big announcements today; I posted about one but not the other:
Short version: I estimated a net increase of 10.7 million Medicaid/CHIP enrollees through 10/31; the actual total was 10.65 million, so I was off by 0.46% on this one.
The other big news was yet another major report from the National Health Interview Survey proving that not only has the U.S. uninsured rate dropped dramatically since the beginning of the year (and even more since the ACA was signed into law), but it's actually down to the lowest level it's been in at least 50 years...and that only runs through the end of June!
Several people have brought this report to my attention, and I'll likely write up something more in-depth about it tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I've gone ahead and plugged the estimated 2.9 million or so autorenewals (from around 45 states) into The Graph all at once, bringing the estimated total up to over 7.6 million. Again, there should be a second "mini-surge" between now and Tuesday the 23rd as the rest of the states (except Vermont) reach their January coverage deadlines. I'm expecting that when the dust settles on all of the renewals, autorenewals and "special case callbacks" from HC.gov, CA, CT etc, the total number of people who will be all set up for January coverage (pending payments, of course) should be just shy of 8 million even...
...which is the same number that it took 6 1/2 months to reach last year. Yes, the bulk of those are renewals, but even so, symbolically that's pretty cool.
After the 23rd, aside from a third "mini-surge" around January 10-15, things should be fairly quiet until around February 10th. At that point, there should be a final Massive Surge...and that's where the other Big Unknown comes into play. There will be a surge at the end, the only question is whether it'll be as impressive as the last few days of March were?
