Hot on the heels of this morning's Commonwealth Study survey, which pegs the reduction of the number of uninsured adults at 5% (around 9.5 million, plus perhaps 2.5 million children under 18, for a total reduction of around 12 million) comes another study by the Urban Institute, which gives a slightly smaller reduction (4% of all adults nationally, or around 8 million...or around 10.5 million or so if you add children in).
The Commonwealth Fund study which is causing such a buzz today contains a lot of interesting data points. The one which is the most bothersome is this:
It's not terribly surprising that expansion states saw their uninsured rate drop more than non-expansion states, but this seems like too much of a difference (11% vs. 2%)...until you remember that this only applies to people in poverty...that is to say, only the Medicaid/CHIP data is relevant here, as noted by Jeffrey Young in his Huffington Post piece.
A wonderful new survey by the Commonwealth Fund was released today, chock full of all sorts of data-nuggety goodness:
We’ve known for a few months now that lots of people signed up for health insurance this year in new marketplaces. A new survey shows that the people who did so are also pretty happy with their purchases.
The survey, from the Commonwealth Fund, a research group, came to similar conclusions as other surveys about the expansion of health insurance. It found that about 15 percent of adults younger than 65 now lack health insurance, down from 20 percent before the Affordable Care Act rolled out in January.
What was more surprising is that people who got the new coverage were generally happy with the product. Overall, 73 percent of people who bought health plans and 87 percent of those who signed up for Medicaid said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new health insurance. Seventy-four percent of newly insured Republicans liked their plans. Even 77 percent of people who had insurance before — including members of the much-publicized group whose plans got canceled last year — were happy with their new coverage.
I'm sure most of you have already seen this photo from President Obama's "border crisis" meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry yesterday.
While I find Perry's "Grumpy Cat / Just Swallowed a Bug" face to be as hilarious as anyone else (made even better by Pres. Obama's laughter), there's something else in this photo which I find a bit strange: The name tags.
The QHP number is identical to what it was a week or so ago; I assume this is just a data entry issue. Meanwhile, both forms of Medicaid enrollment have gone up, by a combined 6,537.
latest enrollment numbers
July 8, 2014
Health Coverage Type Total Enrollments
Medical Assistance 152,041
MinnesotaCare 53,855
Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 52,233
TOTAL 258,129
As an aside, according to KFF, there were around 259,000 uninsured Minnesota residents eligible for Medicaid (pre-ACA + expansion) prior to January 1st. Assuming none of the 205,896 people who enrolled via the MNSure exchange were renewals (and they shouldn't be, according to the prior monthly CMS reports), that suggests that MN has now enrolled nearly 80% of all eligible residents who weren't already on Medicaid, leaving just 52,000 people to go, give or take.
Investor's Business Daily published a story today by someone named John Merline which references an Inspector General report stating that the enrollment data from HC.gov isn't being reconciled properly with the data from the insurance companies on the federal exchange, something which is apparently required by the ACA law itself. Now, if this is true then that's certainly an issue which needs to be resolved. However, my problem with the article comes a bit further down, where my site and data are referenced repeatedly:
The administration hasn't released updated enrollment numbers since May, which covered the entire open enrollment period at the federal exchange. An update would shed light on how many are keeping up with premium payments.
But 15 states have separately reported paid enrollment numbers, and according to data compiled by ACASignups.net, paid enrollment is 322,000 fewer than the last official White House count — which means nearly 13% of those counted haven't paid their premiums.
Several folks have inquired, so yes, I will indeed be attending the 2014 Netroots Nation convention at Cobo Hall next week (July 17 - 20).
No, I don't have a panel; I'm not a guest speaker or anything along those lines, just a regular attendee, but if any site regulars plan on attending, I'd love to meet you. I'll most likely be found either hanging out with the Motor City Kossacks crowd or just wandering around; I don't have any particular agenda.
The growth of Michigan's ACA Medicaid expansion program is finally slowing down, but they've still tacked on another 3,000 or so people in the past week, bringing enrollment up to 64% of the total eligible to enroll:
Healthy Michigan Plan Enrollment Statistics
Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 317,931
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)
*Statistics as of July 7, 2014 *Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.
This Just In: From the Paul Gallo Show, the Mississippi Insurance Dept. and Cover Mississippi: One of the 2 insurance companies operating on the ACA exchange in Mississippi plans on cutting their rates by a whopping 25%!
The caveat is that we still don't know what the other company's rate plans are, nor do I know what that 25% rate cut was in the first place, but this is still excellent news:
In the interest of caution, however, I'm still keeping my "official" projection a bit lower still, at around 8,000 per day (though this is up from the 7,000/day I had been using until now). This translates to around 616,000 new QHP enrollments as of yesterday (77 days out), bringing the estimated total to a bit over 8.6 million overall.
