Long-time readers know that I've been a little obsessed with the so-called "healthcare exchange" called Florida Health Choices since last August, having posted 3-4 entries on this huge pile of Republican FAIL since then.
The short version is that before he was elected a U.S. Senator, Marco Rubio, then a member of the Florida House of Representatives, convinced his colleagues in the Florida state legislature to pony up $900,000 of taxpayer money to set up their own "healthcare exchange" to show that Republicans can outdo the Democrats when it comes to selling health insurance online, dagnabbit! Once the ACA was signed into law, "Florida Health Choices" became essentially a protest project against the Evils of All Things Obamacare.
Of course, there were a few minor problems with "Florida Health Choices", Rubio's brainchild:
It's important to stress that this is not the final enrollment report for Massachusetts; it's the final daily report, which only includes the number of people determined eligible to purchase a private policy (Medicaid enrollees, however, are instant-activation; the number listed here is the number actually enrolled as of that day).
For most of the open enrollment period, QHP selections were running around 45-50% of the total QHP determinations; the other half are people who hadn't actually completed the process or who accidentally submitted 2 applications or whatever.
However, for the final week, it's pretty safe to assume that anyone who bothered to create an account, fill out their info and submit their application was pretty likely to actually put a policy in their shopping cart and check out (as well as paying their first premium on the spot), since yesterday was the (extended) deadline to do so. Therefore, it's a pretty safe bet that all 2,816 of those listed below (of the 7,057 total, which also includes MassHealth), at a minimum, can be added to the total.
However, the actual percentage drop nationally noted in the survey caught my eye. According to Gallup:
Nationwide, the uninsured rate dropped 3.5 percentage points last year, from 17.3% to 13.8%, the lowest annualized rate across the seven years of Well-Being Index measurement. No state reported a statistically significant increase in the percentage of uninsured in 2014 compared with 2013.
Yesterday, the New York Times posted an infographic depicting the breakout of insurance coverage for everyone in the country, based entirely on my data. The grand total of ACA-specific health insurance coverage topped out at around 31.4 million, but left out close to a million people due to rounding and to deliberately leaving out a few items (such as people enrolled in small business coverage via the SHOP exchanges, which I estimate to be around 220,000 people nationally).
The 51 states (including the District of Columbia) that provided enrollment data for December 2014 reported nearly 69.7 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. This enrollment count is point-in-time (on the last day of the month) and includes all enrollees in the Medicaid and CHIP programs who are receiving a comprehensive benefit package.
547,263 additional people were enrolled in December 2014 as compared to November 2014 in the 51 states that reported comparable December and November data.
(And yes, the "51 states" wording is CMS's, not mine)
On Friday, the MA Health Connector confirmed 134,000 QHP selections out of 237,000 people determined eligible for QHPs as of 2/18. Since then they've added another 6,614 QHP determinations.
For most of the 2015 open enrollment period, the number of people actually selecting a plan has hovered between 45-50% of the total determinations. However, as of last Thursday it had shot up to over 56%, and given that today is the final day to enroll for most people, it's a pretty safe bet that anyone who has bothered going through the trouble of creating an account, logging in, plugging in all of their info and submitting an application is also going to complete the process by actually checking out a policy (and presumably paying their first premium, since today's the deadline for that as well).
Therefore, I'm pretty sure that the total is well above 140K by now, and likely somewhat higher than that (since that would still leave another 103,600 people who had previously submitted an application but not completed the process as well).
On Sunday, February 22nd, the "Waiting in Line by Midnight" enrollment extension period officially ended for residents of 38 states (all 37 on Healthcare.Gov, plus California). The overtime period ended on Friday in Minnesota, on Saturday in Idaho and on Monday in Massachusetts, Rhode Island & Vermont.
That leaves 7 states (plus DC) still accepting some or all enrollments as of today:
IMPORTANT!! The table and graph below make several important assumptions about how the rest of 2015 will play out:
First, this assumes that another 1.8 million people nationally take advantage of the special "Tax Season" enrollment period recently announced by the HHS Dept. The exact date ranges differ for many of the state exchanges (from as early as February 17th in Washington State to as late as May 30th in Vermont), but for the most part we're talking about March 15th - April 30th. 1.8 million is complete dart-throwing on my part; the number of people nationally who are eligible to enroll during this period is somewhere between 0 - 6 million, so there's no way of knowing. 1.8 million just sounded reasonable to me.
As always, I'm assuming that roughly 88% of those who select QHP policies end up paying at least the first month's premium.
