Minnesota is posting updates almost daily (ironic given that both the federal exchange as well as NY State of Health are officially not posting any updates until November).
In addition to the QHP daily rate (about 24% of what it was during the normal enrollment period), MN's Medicaid total is up another 3,587 in just the past 6 days.
enrollment update
latest enrollment numbers
June 15, 2014
Health Coverage Type Total Enrollments
Medical Assistance 139,214
MinnesotaCare 49,618
Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 51,809
TOTAL 240,641
Since I started the ACA Signups project, I've generally restricted my posts to ACA enrollment-specific articles and data. After all, the subject of healthcare is so huge, and there's so many other far better sources for developments in the medical field, etc, that it seems best to stick to the subject at hand.
However, the anti-vaxxer movement, which started as the punchline to a bad joke named "Jenny McCarthy" has ceased to be amusing and has now become flat-out frightening.
From January 1 to June 10 this year, California already had 3,458 cases of whopping cough, which already exceeds the number of cases reported in 2013, and following a surge in the incidence of the disease in the past two weeks, health official found it necessary to declare an epidemic.
Last week I made a bold estimate that at least 200,000 additional QHP enrollees are likely to be added each month from 4/15 (the end of the first open enrollment period) through 11/15 (the start of the next one). That's 7 months x 200K, or around 1.4 million on top of the 8.02 million confirmed QHP enrollees during the first period (well, technically the last HHS report runs through 4/19).
Nationally, the open enrollment period average was 8.02 million in 201 days (10/1/13 - 4/19/14), or an average of 39,900 QHPs per day (201 days...this includes everything from the disastrous website launches, to the December surge, to the February "lull", to the March insanity straight through to the April "extension period").
Of course, this wouldn't be such a mystery if the HHS Dept. hadn't cut off enrollment reports during the off-season, but I won't go on that rant again.
So where am I getting this 200K estimate during the off season? Well, let's take a look at the numbers we do have since then:
OK, it's difficult to get a bead on how Oregon has been performing since the end of open enrollment, because they bumped theirs out 2 weeks beyond most other states. Even so, they've added 19,214 additional QHP enrollees since the 4/19 HHS report, or over 350 per day.
Interestingly, there's been no change at all in their reported Medicaid enrollment; I'm assuming they just didn't include that data this week since it's changed some every other time.
June 12, 2014
Update: Private coverage and Oregon Health Plan enrollment through Cover Oregon
Medical enrollments through Cover Oregon: 299,452 Total private medical insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon: 87,522 Oregon Health Plan enrollments through Cover Oregon: 211,930
Dental enrollments
Total private dental insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon 1: 17,751
Net enrollments Net private medical: 80,340
Net private dental: 15,574
Connector Updates for June 7, 2014
Total since October 1, 2013
32,625 Applications completed in the Individual Marketplace 9,482 Individuals and families enrolled in the Individual Marketplace
631 Employers applied to SHOP Marketplace 846 Employees and dependents enrolled via SHOP Marketplace
More positive Medicaid news out of Arkansas (the 75% figure refers to those fully enrolled, but it's actually a bit higher: 76.4%. If you go by "determinations" it's even better, over 83% of the total eligible):
DHS spokeswoman Amy Webb said the figures released cover the month of May.
“Over 187,000 have been determined eligible. Just over 172,000 of those have already completed the enrollment process and now have full access to their private health insurance coverage. Overall we estimate that about 225,000 Arkansans would be eligible for the program so we’re about 75 percent there,” said Webb.
(I should note that the KFF estimates Arkansas' Medicaid-expansion-eligible number at more like 281K, but those are rough numbers and this woman is from the actual state program speaking so I'll defer to her on it).
A trifecta of updates out of the LA Times today thanks to contributor Brian W; can you count how many GOP talking points take serious damage below:
New data show the number of students without health insurance on California State University campuses dropped by 60% after Obamacare enrollment, defying concerns that not enough young people would sign up for health insurance.
...During the open enrollment period that ended in April, some officials worried that if not enough young, healthy people signed up for coverage, insurance companies would be left with too many sick and expensive customers, which would eventually cause carriers to raise premiums.
According to a poll released Thursday, at the 15 largest CSU campuses, approximately 30% of students were uninsured before enrollment began, and 10% were uninsured after. The drop accounts for 60,000 students who became insured, and illustrates the late surge of young people who signed up for policies.
So, yesterday I posted an item about how the ACA has cut Kentucky's uninsured rate by at least 50% since last October. This is significant news, but I also posted similar items about impressive uninsured rate drops in New Jersey (38%), Minnesota (40%) and especially Massachusetts (a good 86% or so, down to nearly zilch). All four posts received various levels of retweets on Twitter. However, the Kentucky one in particular apparently caught the eye of one David Simas, aka the "Assistant to the President and Deputy Senior Advisor for Communications and Strategy."
This press release JUST showed up in my in box; I don't have a link to it on WA's website, so I'm reposting it verbatim below (emphasis mine):
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 12, 2014
Media contact: Public Affairs (360) 725-7055
Individual health insurance market expands more than 30 percent – enrollment now at 327,000
OLYMPIA, Wash. – The individual health insurance market grew 30 percent in one year to more than 327,000 people in Washington state, according to new information reported by health insurers to the Office of the Insurance Commissioner.
The latest enrollment numbers and other insurance market data also indicate that Washington state has succeeded in reducing the number of uninsured by more than 370,000.
Today’s individual market total includes 171,286 people enrolled outside the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, Wahealthplanfinder, and 156,155 people enrolled inside the Exchange as of June 1, 2014.
Since today seems to be "How much has the ACA cut the uninsured rate by in this state/that state?" day, I thought I'd dust off this TPM article from way back on April 1st:
Obamacare has cut Kentucky's uninsured population by more than 40 percent, signing up roughly 360,000 residents since enrollment opened up on Oct. 1, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Some 75 percent of them -- 270,000 -- were previously uninsured. That means Kentucky's uninsured population of 640,000 has come down by 42 percent.
At the time, the headline read "Obamacare Cuts Kentucky's Uninsured Rate By 40 Percent", which was impressive enough. However, that was wayyyy back over 2 months ago. A little simple math tells the rest of the story:
