Remember all the fuss and bother back in 2013 over OMG!!! ELEVENTYGAZILLION POLICIES CANCELLED DUE TO OBAMACARE!!!?
Remember how the number of people having their policies cancelled due to not being compliant with minimum Affordable Care Act standards supposedly totalled anywhere from a somewhat reasonable 4-5 million to an absurd 17 million, depending on whether the rightwing source screaming about it was of the rational or batsh*t insane variety?
Well, in the end, it appears that it was only 2.6 million people at most, according to a study by the Urban Institute at the time. However, even that number may be too high, because it also turns out that a lot of people whose policies were originally cancelled were later reinstated after the backlash caused President Obama and the HHS Dept. to allow states to extend those non-compliant policies by 1, 2 or even 3 years.
OK...technically speaking, 6 states had already kicked off their Tax Filing Season Special Enrollment Period starting as early as February 17th (Washington State), but for 40 states (plus DC) states, the "encore" edition of 2015 ACA Enrollment officially began today. Connecticut doesn't start theirs for another 2 weeks, and 3 states (CO, ID & MA) are not offering a "tax filing season" SEP. However, those three, like every state, still have the "normal" off-season SEP for people who have significant life changes such as getting married, divorced, giving birth, adopting a child, losing their other coverage or moving to a new state.
Just as a few states starting this SEP early, 2 (Vermont and Washington State) are also ending their Tax Season SEP later than the rest. However, for 46 states, the cut-off is April 30th.
U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein are calling on California’s health insurance marketplace, Covered California, to allow women to sign up for coverage when they become pregnant.
Under the current rules of the Affordable Care Act, uninsured women who discover they’re pregnant outside of open enrollment periods can only sign up for coverage once the baby is born. The senators sent a letter to Covered California on Wednesday urging the agency to change the policy to make pregnancy a “qualifying life event” that allows women to enroll in coverage at that time.
I have a ton of ACA-related stories cluttering up my in-box again; here's some of the more interesting ones, all regarding ACA Medicaid Expansion:
MICHIGAN:
For months now, I've been a bit obsessed with figuring out how my home state's Medicaid expansion enrollment has managed to reach as high as 21% more people than were supposedly even eligible for the program. Estimates last year ranged from 477,000 - 500,000, yet enrollment in Healthy Michigan (Gov. Snyder's name for Obamacare Medicaid Expansion) currently sits at a whopping 579K, less than 1 year into the program.
The good news is that MNsure is continuing to provide off-season enrollment reports. The only bummer is that they appear to have switched to monthly reports, but I guess I can live with that:
Latest Enrollment Numbers
March 12, 2015
MNsure provides a robust enrollment metrics summary to the MNsure Board of Directors at each regularly-scheduled board meeting. This page will be updated on board meeting days.
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments
Medical Assistance 90,839
MinnesotaCare 31,070 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 61,109
TOTAL 183,018
Unlike today's DC update, which seems highly questionable due to the "...since Oct. 2013" wording, MNsure's report only includes 2015 enrollments, and the numbers, while still impressive, are much more reasonable.
From October 1, 2013 to March 8, 2015, 89,852 people have enrolled in health insurance coverage through DC Health Link in private insurance or Medicaid:
21,784 people enrolled in a private qualified health plan,
52,115 people have been determined eligible for Medicaid, and
15,953 people enrolled through the DC Health Link small business marketplace (includes Congressional enrollment).
Hmmmm...that "From 10/1/13" clarification is a bit concerning, especially since the official 2015 QHP total as of 2/21/15 was just 18,465. I find it difficult to believe that DC would have increased their QHP enrollment by 18% in just 19 off-season days, but perhaps there was a clerical error or something. I'll likely have to correct this later on, but I'll leave it be for now.
It's also noteworthy that they're officially acknowledging the huge impact that Congressional staffers have on their SHOP enrollments.
UPDATED 3/20/15: Yay! The HHS Dept. has confirmed that yes, they'll release "some enrollment data" the week of March 23rd...but it's still not a full response; see my post about it.
Dear Andy Slavitt, Kevin Counihan and Sec. Burwell:
Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled when you started breaking HC.gov enrollments down weekly, and was especially happy when the state-by-state breakdowns were provided! Awesome! That's the main reason I started this project in the first place, because of the lack of data transparency during the 2014 enrollment period!
We're in a bit of an in-between phase this week. Open Enrollment is officially over, and the Tax Season special enrollment period doesn't start until Sunday in most states.
However, the Massachusetts Health Connector has provided me with a handy report which gives some interesting drill-down data. Most of it is stuff I don't really track anyway, but some of it I do and the rest may be of interest to some. I'm only focusing on a few items, the PDF itself has a bunch more:
CLARIFICATION 3/15/15: No, I don't have any hard proof that anyone has done this or that anyone will do so. For all I know, not a single person has done this. I'm just saying that it's a) easy to do, b) perfectly legal (how do you know for certain what your expected income will be in the future?) and furthermore, c) not unethical, as you'd have to be in pretty dire straits to do this, as shown below.
OK...technically speaking, 6 states had already kicked off their Tax Filing Season Special Enrollment Period starting as early as February 17th (Washington State), but for 40 states (plus DC) states, the "encore" edition of 2015 ACA Enrollment officially began today. Connecticut doesn't start theirs for another 2 weeks, and 3 states (CO, ID & MA) are not offering a "tax filing season" SEP. However, those three, like every state, still have the "normal" off-season SEP for people who have significant life changes such as getting married, divorced, giving birth, adopting a child, losing their other coverage or moving to a new state.
