I wasn't planning on posting anything else about yesterday's gun massacre in San Bernardino beyond my quick post last night, but I do have one more thing to add.
Yesterday (and today), a huge brouhaha broke out on Twitter about people (specifically right-wing politicians and pundits) once again offering nothing but "thoughts and prayers" as a response to the massacre.
This happens every time one of these horrors occurs; it's regular as clockwork. This time, though, many left-leaning folks got tired of the tired, boilerplate "thoughts and prayers" quips being given. Many on the right-wing side are now accusing left-leaners of "mocking" prayer, religion and/or God.
I've confirmed exactly 2,272,733 QHP selections nationally as of yesterday, but that only runs through last Saturday, while some states are missing entirely. My best guess as to the actual total as of 12/02/15 (32 days into the 2016 Open Enrollment Period) is around 3.14 million. That's an average of around 98,000 people per day signing up for private health insurance so far.
I've decided to start breaking out my official weekly projections for the upcoming week out separately from my analysis of the previous week; this way I'll have a "clean" entry to link to for all projections.
As I noted this afternoon, I came in 6.3% under for Week Four, making me exactly 1% under the actual cumulative total for the first 4 weeks:
Week 4 Projection: 370K / Actual: 395K
Cumulative Projection: 2.02 Million / 2.04 Million
Based on this, I'm once again bumping up my Week Five projection a bit, from 600K even to 670K for 11/29 - 12/05. If accurate, that will bring the grand HC.gov total up to 2.71 Million as of Saturday, December 5th. It should also bring the national total up to roughly 3.56 Million.
UPDATE 12/03/15: OK, strike that. This has been nagging at me all day. I'm bumping HC.gov Week Five projection up further to 840,000 for 11/29 - 12/05 (2.88 million cumulatively), or around 3.77 million nationally.
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, starting today.
I couldn't start doing this earlier because this is the first week that CMS has broken out the HealthCare.Gov QHP numbers by state. Now that they've started doing so, I have cumulative numbers for enough states for a chart like this to make sense.
It's important to note that I'm still missing data from some state exchanges; I have bupkis from DC, Idaho, Kentucky, New York, Vermont and Washington. I also only have partial data from others (California includes new enrollees only, while several other states only have data for the first couple of weeks).
In addition, there are two states (Connecticut and Rhode Island) where I have the opposite situation--they've jumped the gun and front-loaded their autorenewals of current enrollees, with the understanding that those folks can still drop their coverage or switch to a different policy between now and December 15th (CT) or December 23rd (RI).
With two weeks to go before the Dec. 15 deadline for full 2016 health coverage, 31,740 people have enrolled in private health plans through Maryland Health Connection as of Dec. 1.
About 71 percent, or 22,477, were enrolled in silver plans, which provide savings in the form of advance premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions for those eligible to lower their cost..
In total, 139,244Marylanders have enrolled in coverage through the state’s health insurance marketplace since open enrollment began on Nov. 1. That includes 107,504 enrolled in Medicaid, which accepts applicants year-round.
Also, 8,880 individuals have enrolled in dental plans which are available for the first time through MarylandHealthConnection.gov for 2016. Of those, 4,022 people enrolled in dental along with a qualified health plan (QHP), 2,756 enrolled in dental along with Medicaid and 2,102 enrolled in a stand-alone dental plan.
I still expect the current week to drop substantially due to it being Thanksgiving week. Note that last year the number dropped about 35% during Thanksgiving week before skyrocketing again the week after that; a similar drop this year would bring it down to around 330K for Week Four...although I'm gonna adjust my Week 4 projection upwards to 370K given the higher-than-expected results for Week Three.
As I note every week, between Rhode Island's tiny population, tinier ACA exchange numbers and especially their decision to "front-load" autorenewals of all current enrollees ahead of the 12/23 deadline for January coverage, their official QHP selection tally is only going up a few hundred per week. Week Four is no diffferent:
PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released certain enrollment, demographic and volume data through Saturday, November 28, 2015, for Open Enrollment.
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of November 28, 2015:
31,238 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
Nearly all of these individuals are current HSRI enrollees that have been autorenewed into a 2016 plan.
1,163 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage, and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.
NOTE: The Weekly HealthCare.Gov Snapshot Reports are normally released at around 1:00pm on Wednesdays. I have a 1:00pm meeting today, so the odds are that I won't be able to write up a response/analysis of the weekly HC.gov numbers until late this afternoon.
THEREFORE, the following assumes that my estimate of appx. 370,000 QHP selections via HealthCare.Gov from 11/22 - 11/28 turns out to be accurate. Obviously if the number is significantly higher or lower than that, I'll have to tweak some of this.
Right on top of yesterday's study by the American Cancer Society linking the Affordable Care Act to a substantial improvement in early detection of cervical cancer, the Huffington Post's Jonathan Cohn reports that the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality has released a different study claiming that 87,000 lives have been saved since 2010 from a reduction in medical errors, and guess what's getting the credit?
Hospitals have cut down on deadly medical errors, saving around 87,000 lives since 2010, according to a new government report.
Pinning down the precise reasons for this change is difficult, to say nothing of predicting whether the decline will continue. Improvement has slowed in just the last year, the report suggests. But many analysts think government initiatives within the Affordable Care Act have played a significant role in the progress so far.
In short, Obamacare may literally be saving lives.
DENVER — Between Nov.1 and Nov. 29, more than 46,000 Coloradans enrolled in health coverage for 2016, either in private health insurance purchased through the state health insurance Marketplace or in Medicaid, or Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+), according to new data released today by Connect for Health Colorado® and the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
“The steady enrollment gains that we have seen during first month of Open Enrollment are very encouraging,” said Connect for Health Colorado® CEO Kevin Patterson. “But now we have just two short weeks to complete enrollment before December 15 – the deadline for coverage to take effect on January 1. I encourage anyone who has not signed up to do it today. Going to our website to find free, in-person help is a great way to start.”
Whether you are renewing or enrolling for the first time, you must complete enrollment by December 15, to have coverage January 1, and avoid a gap in your coverage. Open Enrollment runs through January 31.
