I wasn't really expecting any data drops today, but I've already received surprise updates from California and Massachusetts, and now I can add Connecticut, DC and Hawaii all in one shot (via separate entries):
Connecticut: Last year the state's uninsured rate dropped by about half – from nearly 8 percent to 4 percent. Likely for this reason Kevin Counihan, the CEO of Access Health CT, was scooped up by the federal government to help fix Healthcare.gov. Latest figures for this year come from Dec. 12, which showed 39,000 new Medicaid enrollees and 13,000 new private health plans, according to an email from a state official. Late Monday, Access Health CT announced that it was allowing a grace period until Dec. 19 for enrollment that would begin January 2015. Consumers who had started an application before Monday could have four additional days to fill out their information.
That's 13K new enrollees only; again, it's safe to assume at least a 1:1 ratio between new & renewed enrollees, so I'm calling it at least 26K total for CT so far.
California’s health insurance exchange extended its deadline for consumers wanting Obamacare coverage in effect by Jan. 1.
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, said people who start the application process or make some “good faith effort” by Monday will have until Dec. 21 to finish signing up. Monday at midnight had previously been the hard deadline.
“We are providing this window to get people across the finish line,” Lee said at an exchange board meeting Monday. “We know many of the people applying have never had insurance before, and these are individuals who need to sit down and talk with someone.”
Lee said many insurance agents and enrollment counselors were already fully booked with applicants Monday. He said the deadline extension will allow people to make appointments through Dec. 21.
A nice update out of California...but still a frustrating one. They held an executive board meeting today at which they posted an updated QHP selection total for 2015: 91,693 as of 12/11/14. Unfortunately, this still doesn't include any renewal data for existing enrollees.
As I noted last week, however, I'm extremely confident that CA's renewals/re-enrollments are running easily at the same rate (or potentially as high as 4x as many) as new additions, so I'm very comfortable doubling this number to at least 184,000 total QHP selections as of the 11th.
Wow! I'm impressed! I know Massachusetts said they'd be issuing daily enrollment reports during weekdays, but I really didn't think they'd have time to do so today. Then again, their deadline isn't until next Tuesday (the 23rd), so I guess things aren't too crazy in the Bay State.
Anyway, let's take a look...
Well, they haven't officially updated the "QHP plan selection" tally in a week or so, but I'm reasonably certain that the % of "eligibility determinations", which had been hovering around 50-55% until about a week ago, should have worked it's way up to perhaps 60% in recent days. Assuming I'm correct about this, their QHP selection total should be roughly 52,600 by now, though I'll knock off 600 out of caution and go with 52K even.
Again: During the 2014 open enrollment period, MA only nabbed less than 32K during the full 200-day period, so they're already 60% ahead of last year less than 1/3 of the way through this one.
Meanwhile, they've also added 84K people to Medicaid as well.
STATEMENT FROM ACCESS HEALTH CT ACTING CEO JIM WADLEIGH ON TONIGHT’S OPEN ENROLLMENT DEADLINE FOR HEALTH CARE COVERAGE BEGINNING JANUARY 1, 2015
Hartford, Conn. (December 15, 2014) – In advance of tonight’s midnight deadline for coverage beginning January 1, Access Health CT (AHCT) Acting CEO Jim Wadleigh has released the following statement:
“The deadline to sign up for quality, affordable health care coverage that begins on January 1, 2015 is tonight at midnight. If customers have an application started and select a plan before midnight tonight, they can still get coverage beginning January 1, as long as they complete the application and get us all the relevant information by midnight this Friday, December 19.
How Brownback Is Relying On O-Care To Close Kansas' Huge Budget Hole
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) is calling all hands on deck to fix his state's huge self-imposed budget crisis, which nearly cost him re-election this year, and the staunch conservative is now receiving an assist from an unlikely source: Obamacare.
The state's well-documented budget troubles came after Brownback's dramatic reductions in taxes since taking office in 2011. With its revenue drying up and cash reserves depleted, Kansas is staring at a $280 million hole in its $6.4 billion FY 2015 budget, which ends in June.
Brownback offered his proposal for closing that hole last week, a mixture of spending cuts and transferring funds from other parts of the budget to fill it. And second biggest of those transfers is $55 million in revenue from a Medicaid drug rebate program that was bolstered under the Affordable Care Act.
The short version then is this: Obamacare is helping Kansas address its fiscal crisis -- even if Brownback's administration seems loath to admit it.
It'll still have to get through the GOP-controlled state legislature, of course, but it looks like you can scratch Tennessee off the "Expansion Refusenik" list. I presume this'll be a "Private Option" program similar to the one in Arkansas:
In a major policy move, Gov. Bill Haslam has announced the new Insure Tennessee plan, a two-year pilot program to provide health care coverage to tens of thousands of Tennesseans who currently don't have access to health insurance or have limited options.
The plan would be leveraged with federal dollars, said Haslam, who has been working on a Medicaid expansion plan that could gain approval from both federal officials and the Republican-dominated General Assembly.
I spent a few minutes this morning poking around all 15 ACA exchange websites (HC.gov plus the 14 state-run websites). Obviously I didn't go through and actually create an account or enroll/renew in any of them (although my wife and I did renew our own coverage via HC.gov on Saturday, and everything went fine). However, I at least visited all of the sites and clicked through as far as I could go without actually setting any accounts up.
For the most part, everything went smoothly. Yes, some of the sites have more confusing layouts/navigation than others, but my main concern was whether they load at all, how quickly pages load, whether any glitches or broken links pop up and so on.
Midnight Monday, Pacific time, is the deadline for new customers to pick a health plan that will take effect Jan. 1, and for current enrollees to make changes that could reduce premium increases ahead of the new year.
HealthCare.gov and state insurance websites are preparing for heavy online traffic before the deadline, which gives consumers in the East three hours into Tuesday to enroll.
Thanks to contributor farmbellpsu for the heads' up.
Also, 21 year olds (in all states, not just Alaska) should pay special attention:
Doing nothing appears to be a particularly bad idea for people who turned 21 this year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington group that advocates for low-income people.
As the article notes, just because someone applies for Medicaid doesn't mean that they'll be approved (or some in the household might while others aren't). Still, assuming that, say, 95% are approved and enrolled, and assuming 1.8x people per household on average (the Census Bureau says it's more like 2.5x), that should still be a good 125K Pennsylvania residents added to the tally in the first 2 weeks...or over 20% of the total eligible in the state:
Two weeks after enrollment began, the state has received tens of thousands of applications for health care coverage by way of the “Healthy PA” program, which offers subsidized, Medicaid-like insurance through private carriers to low-income Pennsylvanians.
As of the end of the day Wednesday, the state had received applications from nearly 44,000 households, according to the Department of Human Services. It also has received an additional 30,000 household applications referrals through the federal health care marketplace.
That doesn’t necessarily mean all those applicants will be eligible to receive coverage, though likely many of them will be, said Kait Gillis, a DHS spokeswoman.
