I'm not sure whether the 306 "new coverage applications" refer to actual enrollments or not; going by my own post yesterday, I'll assume not until I hear confirmation otherwise:
The exchange processed 32 new coverage applications by 11:30 a.m., officials reported. By the close of business Monday, that number climbed to 306.
“We have not had any problems reported today,” said Lawrence Miller, chief of Health Care Reform, on Sunday.
...The exchange processed 1,515 renewals as of Monday evening. Those are a mix of people who submitted changes early and those being automatically reenrolled in their current plans.
For comparison, last year Vermont only had 38,000 QHP enrollees total.
Update: I've confirmed that, as I suspected, the 306 "new applications" are just that, not necessarily actual enrollments.
I was geeked beyond measure when I was told that the all-new Massachusetts Health Connector would be posting daily enrollment reports. Until now, the only state doing this was Minnesota, and they only started doing so (I think) after the end of the first open enrollment period (or close to it).
Sure enough, they've already posted two "dashboard reports" with metrics showing how many Bay Staters had been determined eligible for Medicaid ("MassHealth") as well as the different types of Qualified Health Plans (QHPs), which are broken out into those paying full price, those receiving tax credits (APTC) and those qualifying for "ConnectorCare" which seems to be some sort of special Massachusetts-specific program which is somewhere between the Arkansas "Private Medicaid Option" and Minnesota's "MinnesotaCare" Basic Healthcare Program...except that the "ConnectorCare" enrollees are still categorized as "QHPs" for enrollment purposes.
The reports give daily tallies of how many accounts are created and how many applications are submitted, along with call volume, website traffic and forth.
Yes, I know what you're saying: This is either a joke or a typo; how could Maryland be launching open enrollment a day early when 2015 #OE2 actually started 3 days ago?? Shouldn't that read "3 days late"?
Well, no, actually. As I noted back in September, due to the horrible technical problems which the MD Health Connection had with their original platform last year, they wisely decided to be extremely cautious this time around with their all-new software.
In short, instead of opening the floodgates all at once on the 15th, MD decided to take a phased approach:
Yes, I realize it's kind of stupid to post The Graph when there's barely anything to Graph yet, but I wanted to set the stage for 2015 #OE2. As you can see, I'm doing it in a much cleaner, more organized way this time--the timeline includes the entire open enrollment period (which is less awkward to do this year since it's only 3 months instead of 6).
I've also overlaid projection lines to show roughly how I expect the QHP enrollment pattern to go--an initial "mini-surge", then a massive spike as the December 15th deadline approaches (anyone who's already enrolled who auto-renews or manually switches to a different policy will be part of this, since they don't want to have a coverage gap in January). I'm assuming roughly 7 million QHPs by 12/15 (or possibly a few days later...it's my understanding that some state exchanges are using 12/18 as the cut-off for January 1st?).
Then things should level out a bit from mid-December until mid-January because all the autorenewals will be accounted for (not to mention the holiday season). I'm figuring perhaps 1 million more; these folks will have coverage starting on February 1st.
OK, this one is a bit vague, but for the moment I'll take it. "Land of Lincoln Health" is an insurance CO-OP which operates, as you'd imagine from the name, in Illinois. I'm fairly certain that's the only state they operate in, so this number should be restricted to IL:
Land of Lincoln has enrolled “several hundred people” since open enrollment began this past Saturday, and the plan is already receiving payments from consumers, said Dorgan, who is in charge of finding and renewing members. About 6,000 people visited Land of Lincoln's website over the weekend with no apparent technology issues—an auspicious start for a plan that hopes to have 50,000 covered lives for 2015.
For the moment I'll assume "several hundred" means "300 - 400" and will go with 350 until better data comes out.
This is excellent news for another reason as well: Land of Lincoln only scored about 2,500 enrollees for 2014 open enrollment, so they're at something like 14% of their entire 2014 number in just 2 days.
Again, for comparison, during the first open enrollment period, Minnesota enrolled 48,495 people, or 242 per day, so their initial pace is about even with that so far:
More than 500 people signed up for commercial health insurance this weekend through MNsure, the state’s health insurance exchange.
Open enrollment started Saturday at MNsure, and more than 27,000 new and returning users accessed the health exchange website through the weekend, said Scott Leitz, the MNsure chief executive during a news conference Monday in St. Paul. About 2,700 people phoned the MNsure call center for help, and the average wait time was about two minutes, Leitz said.
The first-weekend figures are a good start toward meeting enrollment goals, Leitz said. The number of phone calls this weekend was 10 times the typical volume for MNsure.
By comparison, during the first open enrollment period, as of April 19th, Maryland had only enrolled 67,757 people in private policies, or 338 per day (or around 840 in 2.5 days).
So, right off the bat Maryland is doing twice as well so far this time around.
Given those significant changes, officials are urging uninsured and insured residents to explore their options. Those who purchased plans through the healthcare.gov marketplace will automatically be re-enrolled, but health care advocates say renewal may not be the best option because the tax credits that subsidize coverage could have changed. And some who signed up last year instead may be eligible for the state's newly expanded Medicaid program.
Officials seemed to have learned from their mistakes—at the very least, the site went through more testing—but there are still questions about what the administration has done to improve the user experience, whether premiums have gone up, whether people will enroll and whether the less-talked-about state-run exchanges are fixed, too.
(Technically speaking Massachusetts' eventual QHP total ended up being around 34,000, but with attrition/etc. it has likely fallen back down to around 32K by now anyway, so that's still a pretty fair comparison).
From the Press Release:
NEARLY 12,000 INDIVIDUALS & FAMILIES SUCESSFULLY DETERMINED ELIGIBLE FOR ACA HEALTH INSURANCE VIA MAHEALTHCONNECTOR.ORG
