HHS is hitting the malls this weekend to make sure that Obamacare is on the minds of consumers during the busiest shopping weekend of the year.
The department on Wednesday will announce new partnerships it has made with retail stores, pharmacies and popular websites to spread the word about the current open enrollment season, which began on Nov. 15 and ends Feb. 15. On three key days after Thanksgiving — Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday — as well as dates beyond, Westfield Shopping Centers, the National Community Pharmacists Association and the XO Group will provide consumers with information about how they can sign up for coverage through the exchanges.
OK, technically not all of these are due specifically to ACA Medicaid expansion, but the majority of them should be, based on past reports. Unfortunately, it's my understanding that the Colorado exchange has decided to stop including Medicaid expansion data with their reports; hopefully this isn't the case, but assuming it is, this is the best I can do for now.
According to the CO Dept. of Healthcare Policy, as of October, the combined Medicaid/CHIP enrollment was 1,172,793:
In October 2014, there were 1,120,120 Coloradans enrolled in Medicaid and 52,673 Coloradans enrolled in CHP+.
Back in December 2013 (just prior to the expansion provision), Colorado had 862,549 people in these programs, a difference of 310,244.
I'm estimating that perhaps 40,000 of these are "woodworkers", the other 270K or so strict expansion.
According to KFF.org, roughly 332,000 Coloradans are eligible for the expansion program.
According to the state administration, there are roughly 477,000 Michiganders who qualify for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Well, guess what?
Healthy Michigan Plan Enrollment Statistics
Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 469,698
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)
*Statistics as of November 24, 2014
*Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.
Now, obviously that 477K eligibility figure could be off (I had previously heard estimates as high as 500,000). The point is, the Medicaid expansion well in Michigan, along with many other states, is already running dry less than a year into the program (and in Michigan's case, less than 8 months in).
UPDATE: Hmmmm...ok, that's a first: According to today's update, the number enrolled in the Healthy Michigan program has actually dropped by around 8,500 people over the past week:
Last night I noted that both Alaska and Wyoming are strongly considering jumping in the ACA Medicaid expansion pool. If both go through, the number of states which have expanded the program would rise to 31 out of 51 (if you include DC). Tennessee is also considering an Arkansas-style "private Medicaid option".
I also mentioned in passing that one of the "existing" expansion states was Pennsylvania. I knew they were also talking about a "private option" program, but I wasn't sure what the status of the program was. I didn't think it was a done deal yet, but the Kaiser Family Foundation has already struck PA off of their "Medicaid Gap" list, so I'm including them in the tally.
Well, this morning, not one but two site supporters have confirmed that not only is PA definitely moving forward with that program, it might actually end up being "full" expansion instead of the "private option" after all...along with some other useful tidbits I didn't know about:
OK, I wasn't quite sure how to deal with the Medicaid Graph this year. On the one hand, there isn't any deadline or "open enrollment" period for enrolling in Medicaid/CHIP; it's year-round. On the other hand, there simply wasn't room to just keep the 2014 Graph running continuously, at least without making the relative scale between the QHP and Medicaid graphs completely out of whack.
In addition, as I noted when the September CMS Medicaid/CHIP report came out, my own estimate seemed to be running around 4.5% too high compared to the official government figures (they had 9.1 million + 950K from prior to 2014 as of 9/30 (around 10.05 million); I had it down as around 10.5 million, or 450K higher.
Therefore, I'm resolving both issues by picking up the 2015 graph right where the 2014 graph left off...but I've also knocked a couple hundred thousand off in order to at least partially account for the discrepancy. As a result, if you try putting the two side by side, there will be a mis-match of a few hundred thousand, but I can live with that.
In any event, here's what it looks like at the moment:
On the campaign trail, Bill Walker made expanding the state’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act one of his top priorities. He said he could make the decision without input from the state legislature:
“It’s up to the Governor to accept that.”
But when Walker takes office next month, will it really be so easy to expand a program that has been a tough sell in other conservative states?
Medicaid expansion would allow around 40,000 low income Alaskans– mostly childless adults, to receive health benefits. The federal government will pay 100 percent of the program until the end of 2016. After that, the state’s share will slowly increase to 10 percent by 2020. Walker has said the decision is a no-brainer, at least while the federal government is providing full funding.
Massachusetts continues to kick butt this time around in general, but I particularly like that they're providing a daily breakout of their enrollment data. Check today's out, which includes both Wednesday and Thanksgiving Thursday:
This story from the 27th isn't an official number, but it's consistant with the formal press release from a few days earlier which had CO's tally at 6,144 as of 11/22:
Enrollment in Connect for Health Colorado, a health-insurance exchange, opened Nov. 15, and more than 8,000 people are already enrolled. Only about 200 people had enrolled during the same period last year, according to a release from Connect for Health Colorado.
...Many residents re-enrolled this month, he said, and there are a “significant” number of new enrollees.
On November 24th I took a shot at estimating how many 2015 QHP (qualified health plans) had been enrolled in as of the first week of the new open enrollment period. Based on the extremely limited data I had available from a handful of state exchanges, I internally estimated it was probably close to 500,000 nationally...but in the interest of caution, publicly went with 410,000.
Since around 75% of the total enrollments are likely to come from the federal exchange (Oregon and Nevada have been added to it, adding 109,000 current enrollees, while Idaho has moved off onto their own exchange with only 76,000 currently enrolled), a simple extrapolation suggests that the *total* number as of 11/21 was actually more like 610,000.
