It's also important to remember that unlike HC.gov, CoveredCA was (for the most part, anyway) fully operational from the beginning last year, which makes this a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison.
a) the actual number who've been enrolling daily in the off-season is higher than my 9,000/day estimate, or
b) that the attrition rate after the first month is lower than my 3%/month estimate, or
c) more than 90% of enrollees eventually pay their first month's premium, or
c) some combination of all three.
Considering that NYC has around 400 zip codes by itself, this was no doubt a rather Herculean task.
Today, however, they've gone one step further, with a state-wide map of September enrollments by zip code...and when you include the entire state of NY (not just NYC), you're talking about 2,200 zip codes (!) Excellent job!
On it's surface, this article isn't anything terribly special (although it is well-written). It's a piece by a physician who has been protesting North Carolina's refusal to expand Medicaid under the ACA.
The reason I'm calling attention to it is because The Graph was cited in the 3rd paragraph (see that tinly "1" footnote at the end of the first sentence):
Since passage of the ACA, 23 million to 28 million Americans have gained access to health insurance through insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansions, and the mandate that children be allowed to remain on their parents' policies until the age of 26.1 Several studies have shown a very concrete benefit of expanding insurance: reduced mortality.2 If a Medicaid expansion in North Carolina achieved similar results, hundreds of deaths per year could be prevented. Less tangibly, millions of citizens have had a weight lifted from their shoulders and can now feel free to change jobs or pursue less lucrative careers as entrepreneurs or artists, assured that they won't have to go without health insurance.
I really, really like this guy--not just because he's strongly embraced the ACA, but because his philosophy is very much in line with mine when it comes to transparency:
Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler grabbed national attention last year when he broke with President Obama’s efforts to mollify a public upset by canceled insurance plans. Of late, Kreidler has been openly critical of the state’s botched efforts to make repairs to the online insurance exchange.
But Kreidler remains a champion of the effort to make universal health care a reality, and Washington has taken some meaningful steps in that direction. The state has reduced the number of uninsured residents by roughly 38 percent since it expanded who is eligible for Medicaid and opened a new insurance marketplace in October 2013.
It looks like my "Denny's Grand Slam" Halbig/King workaround is being seriously mulled over by TPTB, although I'm sure it'd be more like a Filet Mignon kind of a thing in practice:
This article from the Seattle Times is primarily about the Washington State exchange still having some technical problems, but there's also a key #OE2 enrollment nugget:
Of the 25,000 applications completed on the exchange so far in the first week of the second round, more than 10,000 are for insurance plans while the remainder are Medicaid applications. Officials don’t yet know how many are people renewing their coverage, as opposed to new customers. Roughly 2,000 of the applicants have scheduled their first payments.
There you go: 10K applications, 2K actually selected & enrolled. Since the article was published at around 6pm on Tuesday, I'm assuming that number runs through Monday night.
Their governors might have hated Obamacare, but their attorneys general just love that Obamacare money.
Eleven states that chose not to set up their own health-care marketplaces filed court papers on Monday supporting the legality of federal subsidies that help their residents buy insurance plans through HealthCare.gov.
Those subsidies are being challenged by four lawsuits that claim only enrollees of health-care exchanges set up by an individual state can get that financial assistance, in the form of tax credits.
With enrollment now open for the federally run health insurance marketplace, Nebraska community groups are taking new approaches to reach out to those who lack coverage.
Illinois lawmakers may have one more chance to approve a state-run health insurance marketplace during the fall legislative session that starts today, and they are under pressure from an end-of-the-year deadline and a pending court decision.
Supporters of creating a state-run website say the impending deadline to receive up to $300 million in federal funding plus a U.S. Supreme Court decision on tax credits due in the spring create urgency. Currently, Illinois residents purchase insurance on the national HealthCare.gov website.
