Thanks to "Intheknow" from the comments for the heads up on this:

NYDFS, NYSOH, CMS ANNOUNCE ADDITIONAL ACTIONS REGARDING HEALTH REPUBLIC INSURANCE OF NEW YORK

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), the New York State of Health Marketplace  (NYSOH), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) today announced additional actions regarding Health Republic Insurance of New York (“Health Republic”) and a transition plan for Health Republic customers.

Here's a list of links & reminders going into #OE3 (I'll be updating/clarifying this as I go but want to at least get it live for now):

• Open Enrollment runs from November 1st - January 31st this time around.

• The deadline for January coverage is December 15th in 46 states/DC.

• The deadline for January coverage is December 23rd in ID, MA, RI & WA.

• The deadline for February coverage is Jan. 15th in 46 states/DC, Jan. 23rd in ID/MA/RI/WA.

• After that, you still have until Jan. 31st to enroll, but your coverage won't start until March 1st.

• Hawaii is no longer running through their own website; HI now uses HealthCare.Gov.

Here's a summary of the Eight Most Important Pieces of Advice I Can Give for 2016 Open Enrollment:

Hat tip to Politico's Paul Demko for the story (subscription only) and Katie Jennings for the tip. According to the Arizona Dept. of Insurance, an 11th CO-OP is being pulled off of the ACA exchange literally hours (as in, less than 24 hours) before the launch of the 2016 Open Enrollment Period:

Meritus Health Placed Under Supervision

Two Arizona health insurance companies have been placed under supervision by the Arizona Director of Insurance, Andy Tobin.  Director Tobin filed an Order for Supervision on October 30, 2015, to place Meritus Health Partners and Meritus Mutual Health Partners into supervision.  Meritus declined to consent to the Order for Supervision.  The Meritus companies’ ability to write new policies or renew existing policies is suspended.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has removed the Meritus plans from the Marketplace.  Director Tobin, appointed as Supervisor under Arizona law, will oversee the two companies.

NOTE: True Healthcare Data Nerds who want to see the details on every 2016 HC.gov policy should skip to the end of this entry.

The HHS Dept. held a conference call and issued a brief regarding 2016 Open Enrollment this afternoon. There's a bunch of data points and info, but the biggest takeaway for me is this one:

More than 8 in 10 (86 percent) current Marketplace enrollees can find a lower premium plan in the same metal level before tax credits by returning to the Marketplace to shop for coverage. If all consumers switched from their current plan to the lowest-cost premium plan in the same metal level, the total savings would be $4.5 billion. In 2015, nearly one-third of consumers who reenrolled in a Marketplace plan switched to a new plan.

Last week, in light of the #RiskCorridorMassacre debacle, I tried to find some good news on the CO-OP front, and while I didn't find much to cheer about, there were some bright spots in Maine/New Hampshire (where one CO-OP actually turned a profit last year), along with Illinois, Montana, Idaho, Ohio and Wisconsin (where the CO-OPs are still losing money, but seem to have staunched the blood flow and claim to be stable now, to put it in medical terms).

Today I can add one more state to the Good News column...New Jersey:

During the past month, five health insurance co-ops across the country have announced they are shutting down at the end of this year.

Health policy analysts are predicting more closures, but Health Republic of New Jersey probably won’t be one of them.

CNBC's Dan Mangan reports:

HealthCare.gov is going to see some shrinkage in 2016.

The number of health insurance plans available on that huge federal Obamacare marketplace for 2016 is decreasing by up to 12 percent compared with this year, industry sources told CNBC.

And there will be an even sharper reduction — of more than 40 percent — in the number of health plans on HealthCare.gov known as PPO plans, which offer customers the most flexibility in where they can get medical services covered by their insurer, sources said.

At the same time, there will be a marked increase in the number of so-called HMO plans, which do not as a rule cover costs incurred by customers outside of the plan's network of health providers.

The decreases on HealthCare.gov — which serves residents of 37 states — come a year after federal officials boasted about a 25 percent increase in the number of insurers offering plans for 2015.

As regular readers know, I've been trying to figure out whether effectuated ACA exchange enrollments have dropped noticably since the second quarter or not. Since last November, the HHS Dept. has been projecting that the effectuated number will be down to 9.1 million enrollees by December from 9.95 milliion as of the end of June.

However, over the past couple of weeks, I've compiled Q3 (end of September) data from 8 different state exchanges which collectively suggest that current enrollments are actually up since June...or, at worst, have only dropped slightly:

After the first Republican debate back in August, I wrote a piece over at healthinsurance.org titled "Has FOX News surrendered on Obamacare?" in which I noted that the ACA, which had been a near obsession on the part of the GOP for over 5 years, was barely mentioned:

In short, from what I can gather, the Affordable Care Act …

… the law which has consumed 99 percent of the Republican Party’s attention for the past 6 years or so …
… the law which has survived over 50 repeal attempts …
… the law which recovered from an unprecedented epic technical meltdown …
… the law which survived a federal government shutdown designed specifically to destroy it …
… the law which survived hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Koch Brothers attack ads …
… the law which survived two major Supreme Court decisions …

… proved to be worth perhaps three minutes of total airtime and discussion out of nearly four hours of Republican Party Presidential debate.

With the 2016 Open Enrollment Period quickly approaching, here's the most important advice I can give:

• #1: SHOP AROUND. SHOP AROUND. SHOP AROUND.

Earlier today, the HHS Dept. released an in-depth analysis of the coverage decisions made for by the 4.8 million people who were still enrolled in HealthCare.Gov policies at the end of 2014 who went on to either renew their policies or switch to a different one for 2015 (note that the analysis only covers the 35 states run via HC.gov in both years. Oregon and Nevada ran their own ill-fated exchanges in 2014 and Idaho moved onto their own exchange in 2015, so these 3 states aren't included. Hawaii is moving to HC.gov for 2016 but was on it's own for both 2014 and 2015).

The report itself is quite detailed about how many people actively shopped around, how many of those kept their current plans, how many switched to a different carrier and/or a different metal level, but the bottom line is this:

The thought just occurred to me: Given that 9 of the ACA CO-OPs have closed up shop over the past few months...including no fewer than 6 in just the past 2 weeks (Kentucky, Tennessee, Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina and, just yesterday, Utah), along with at least two private insurers (WINhealth of Wyoming and, to a lesser extent, Coventry of Kansas) due specifically to wha