Last night I bit the bullet and posted a "quasi-endorsement" for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Presidential Primary. I say "quasi" because I never came right out and actually stated that I think other people should choose her over Bernie Sanders. What I said was that I have serious concerns about her, but when it comes to the subject of healthcare, I find myself coming to the conclusion that as much as I may support a single payer (or some similar type of universal coverage) healthcare plan, I just find Sen. Sanders's just-released plan to be a) too vague even as a broad, general outline and b) too unrealistic even as a negotiating starting point.
While the response in the comments here has been calm and reasonable, the response from some Sanders supporters over at Daily Kos was...well, "passionate", to put it mildly. Many people were supportive, some offered reasonable rebuttals and counter-arguments...but a certain subset accused me of being a Hillary shill, a GOP stooge and so forth, claiming that I never actually supported single payer in the first place (and that I don't now, even though it was the approach and timeline which I was debating, not whether SP is the way to go at all).
Add 290K to that and you're up to roughly 1.476 million people.
My official target for California is 1.80 million, so CoveredCA has reached 82% of where I was expecting them to be by now...which is right in line with where I think things stand nationally.
For the record, that also means 93,616 renewals from last year.
They also confirmed later that these numbers are as of 1/19, so that's an additional 4,467 in 14 days, or 319 per day on average.
They'll almost certainly reach their own target of 105K - 115K QHPs, but to achieve my target of 125K they'll have to ramp things up to over 1,300 per day for the remaining 12 days of open enrollment, which is probably pushing it (120K might be doable, however).
Maryland had previously reported just over 150,000 QHPs as of 12/28/15, so this sounds about right: Around 5,000 more people in the first 3 weeks of January, with 10 days left to go (I'm not sure what date the 155K figure is through, I'll assume that's as of last night). That's roughly 220 per day.
Assuming no final week surge of any sort, Maryland should add roughly 2,200 more people by the 31st, but I'm guessing it'll be closer to another 5K, for perhaps 160K in the end.
UPDATE 1/21/16: Updated to include new data from Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut and California.
I launched the "State by State" chart feature towards the end of the 2015 Open Enrollment period last time around, and it proved to be pretty popular, so I've brought it back this year.
Note that whle the enrollment numbers for most states below are current through January 16th, most of the state-based exchanges are either slightly more current or up to three weeks behind.
At yesterday's MNsure Legislative Oversight Committee meeting, CEO Allison O'Toole reported that as of January 15, MNsure had enrolled 75,000 Minnesotans into private health insurance coverage since the beginning of open enrollment, November 1, 2015.
As of January 10, MNsure had enrolled 69,671 Minnesotans into private coverage. This means MNsure has seen an increase of 5,329 private plan enrollments in five days. In addition, about 45 percent of private plan enrollees are new to MNsure for 2016. This is the highest percentage of new enrollees nationwide.
MNsure's goal is to enroll 83,000 Minnesotans by the end of open enrollment.
This will be the final enrollment update until preliminary end of open enrollment numbers are released on Monday, February 1.
As a reminder, the 2016 open enrollment period ends on Sunday, January 31. The MNsure Contact Center will be open extended hours on Saturday, January 30, from 8 a.m. - 8 p.m., and on Sunday, January 31, from 8 a.m. - midnight.
The national total was around 11.50 million QHP selections as of January 9th. Since I won't know how big of a difference the "Live Purge!" factor is making until well after the end of March (when the Q1 effectuation report comes out), I still have to work within the confines of how CMS has been reporting enrollments this season.
With that in mind, I've dropped my end-of-OE3 projection down from 14.7 million to somewhere between 13.8 - 14.2 million (call it 14.0 million even for simplicity).
In order to hit 14.0 million total, 2.5 million people will have to enroll in the final 3 weeks, most likely broken out something like:
Until tonight, I hadn't decided for certain who I'm voting for in the Democratic Presidential Primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. That is, I've made no secret about being a "Hillary leaner"...but I am a strong supporter of single payer healthcare (or something close to it, anyway), I do have concerns about her close ties to Wall Street, I do side more closely with Sanders than Clinton on many other issues, and yes, I'm still deeply bothered by her vote over a decade ago to invade Iraq. I used to listen to "Brunch with Bernie" on the Thom Hartmann show years ago (I think it used to be broadcast on Air America?), and gained tremendous respect for Sen. Sanders and his no-nonsense style.
Over the past few months, I've ranted repeatedly about what a stupid, short-sighted, petty move it is of Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin to shut down the kynect ACA exchange, for a variety of reasons...most of which center around the fact that the kynect exchange has been operating smoothly since the moment it launched in October 2013. In other words, there's very little reason to kill kynect, and plenty of reasons to keep it operational.
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi visited the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), today to highlight a new report showing that thousands of Californians who have obtained health insurance as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have received vital treatment — including brain surgeries, heart transplants, cancer treatment and trauma care — since January 2014, when the health exchange opened its doors.
“Today’s report is the latest evidence that the Affordable Care Act is delivering on the promise of making health care a right for all, not just a privilege for the few,” Pelosi said. “Covered California has been an enormous success. Thanks to this historic law, nearly 1.3 million Californians now have affordable coverage through the Covered California marketplace — and this data today makes clear that Californians are using this coverage to access vital, high-quality health care.”
