Huge enrollment news day--this is unexpected but welcome on top of the HC.gov report:
Press Release: Governor Cuomo Announces NY State of Health Hits Benchmark of Two Million Enrollees
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that the New York State of Health (NYSOH) Marketplace has enrolled more than two million New Yorkers in affordable health insurance coverage. This is the latest record enrollment for New York’s health exchange, and 89 percent of enrollees have reported that they had no coverage at the time they joined the Marketplace. New Yorkers who have enrolled in coverage through the Marketplace have overwhelmingly reported that they are satisfied with their health insurance (92 percent) and are using their coverage to access care (84 percent).
Latest enrollment breakdown:
· Total cumulative enrollment: 2,004,827 · Total Medicaid enrollment: 1,491,859
· Total private coverage: 512,968
· Total new 2015 enrollment: 429,972
· Total new 2015 Medicaid enrollment: 297,423
· Total new private coverage: 132,549
· Renewal rate in private coverage: 85 percent
It's one thing to know that the 10 million mark was broken over the weekend; it's something else to have it confirmed. Today's weekly HC.gov report brought the confirmed total up to 9.917 million nationally...but it was followed almost immediately by a surprise New York State of Health press release stating that NY has ramped up their QHP total to nearly 513,000*...a whopping 156K increase in just the past 17 days, which is rather astonishing.
*Note: it looks like NY may be including about 58K "Child Health Plus" enrollees in this number; if so, the actual QHP total would be about 454.5K, still impressive...and would also reduce the total below to about 10.016 million..but still over the 10 million mark. Until I can confirm this, however, I'm leaving the full 513K in the spreadsheet.
UPDATE 5/19pm: OK, just received confirmation from the NY State of Health that yes, today's 513K "private coverage" figure does indeed include Child Health Plus enrollees. They didn't have the exact number, but I'm fairly certain that it should be somewhere around 58-60K of the total.
As I noted last week, Rhode Island is doing exactly what every state exchange (as well as HC.gov) should be doing, assuming they have the technical capability to do so: They're updating their "enrollment" data weekly by purging those who didn't pay by the payment deadline, thus keeping their enrollment data as "clean" as possible. As a result, their "total" enrollment tally has actually dropped over the past 2 weeks as they cull unpaid enrollees from the official count. This is a good thing.
Unfortunately, since they're the only state doing this so far (both VT and MA are also tracking payment rates, but they're not lowering the "total" number accordingly), it also means that their "total" data is out of sync with everyone else's. This skews my national payment rate calculation a bit, but RI's numbers are so low anyway that it shouldn't have much of an impact one way or the other.
In any event, as of January 31st:
RENEWAL UPDATE
As of January 31, 2015, 78% of Year One customers have renewed (selected a plan) for 2015 (77% of renewing customers paid the first month’s premium).
I'm assuming that "nearly 10M" only runs through Friday the 30th (the weekly HHS reports always run through the previous Friday). I projected crossing the 10M path the following day (Saturday). The 7.5M and 2.4M figures (9.9M total) are obviously rounded off, so the total could be as high as 7.54M + 2.44M, or 9.98M total. Plus, of course, it's possible that they're missing a few days of data for some of the state exchanges. Tack on another 25K or so for Saturday and you're at 10M (at worst it looks like I was off by 1 day).
New Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy: Measles vaccine is safe and effective
FEBRUARY 4, 2015, 8:02 AM|Dr. Vivek Murthy is making history as the first surgeon general of Indian descent and the youngest. Murthy joins "CBS This Morning" from Washington for his first on-camera interview since being confirmed as surgeon general and discusses the safety of the vaccine. He also touches on his views on the legalization of marijuana.
Another 1,644 QHP determinations yesterday. Assuming about half selected a plan, that's another 800 or so; the total should be up to about 116K by now. Medicaid has now reached 221K.
Shifting to public exchanges… We are pleased with our first year execution, particularly in light of the well-publicized challenges with the initial launch of the public exchanges. We ended the year with approximately 560 thousand on-exchange members, modestly ahead of our most recent projections. Additionally, while the open enrollment period is still on-going, we are on track to exceed our initial enrollment projections for 2015. Further, we have successfully transitioned the vast majority of our off-exchange membership to ACA-compliant plans, consistent with our previous projections. As we look at our total individual business, we now project that we will end the first quarter with approximately 1.1 million members, including up to 800 thousand on-exchange members.
There's a lot of great lines in the 1988 semi-autobiographical movie/play "Biloxi Blues" by Neil Simon. Most are funny, some are poignant. To me, one of the most powerful scenes is when Jerome/Simon's (played by Matthew Broderick) diary is found and read by his boot camp bunkmates. Among the private thoughts he has about them being revealed, one of his friends, Arnold Epstein, discovers that Jerome thinks that he (Epstein) is gay. Since the story is set in the World War II-era U.S. Army, this obviously has much bigger implications than it would today.
After the scene plays out, Jerome/Simon/Broderick's voiceover notes that:
"Something magical happens when people read something on paper...they have a tendency to believe it. They figure no one would have bothered to write it down if it wasn't true." (that's a paraphrase...I can't find the video clip or transcript for Biloxi Blues online).
Jerome concludes by noting that this incident taught him to be more careful about what he writes.
OK, kind of a stupid title, I know, but it's been a really long day...spent 3 hours clearing our driveway/porch/roof/etc. after a snowstorm (and my kid had a snow day as well, of course, making it difficult to get any work done even after I was done shoveling...)
Anyway, there were four ACA-related stories today which are all worthy of a full entry, but I'm too exhausted to do a full writeup on any of them:
How is Obamacare ruining your life today? Fox News host Tucker Carlson thinks that he knows how Obamacare is ruining your life if you live in Colorado, let’s see if he is correct! Colorado’s health care exchange, Connect for Health Colorado, glitched out last week and cancelled the health insurance of 3,600 Coloradans who went on the state’s exchange to shop for another plan. Tucker Carlson invited perfect Fox News victim Steven Roussel, an articulate white guy, to describe the absolute horror of this bureaucratic glitch, or, as Tucker Carlson put it, “Kafka comes to Colorado!” Indeed!
