Statements by Secretary Lew and Secretary Burwell on preparing for the upcoming tax season
In preparation for the 2015 tax filing season, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department are putting in place resources to provide tax filers with the information and resources they need to get their questions answered.
Millions of Americans who get their health insurance through work are benefitting from the Affordable Care Act, and millions of others have signed up for the Health Insurance Marketplaces and received financial assistance to lower their monthly premiums.
Starting this year, consumers will see some changes to their tax returns. While the vast majority of tax filers – over three quarters – will just need to check a box on their tax return indicating they had health coverage in 2014, people who have coverage through the Marketplaces, or decided not to enroll in coverage, should be aware of some additional steps that will be a part of the tax filing process starting this year.
A few days ago, Rhode Island issued their latest numbers through 12/27. However, like Vermont, Minnesota and Hawaii, they bumped their January-start deadline out to New Year's Eve, making it tricky to get a bead on their "post deadline" enrollment pattern, which is where things are for every state now.
PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released enrollment data, certain demographic data and certain volume metrics through Saturday, January 3, 2015, for Open Enrollment.
Individual Enrollment data (November 7, 2014 through January 3, 2015) As of January 3, 2015, 78% of Year One customers have renewed (selected a plan) for 2015 (59% of renewing customers paid their first month’s premium).
Total New Customers: 6,067
Total Renewed Customers: 20,313
Total HealthSource RI enrollments for 2015 coverage (including those who have not yet paid): 26,380
As always, this is just an estimate; it could be slightly higher or lower. However, my best estimate is that 2015 private QHP selections via the various ACA exchanges (HC.gov plus the 14 state-based versions) will cross the 9 million milestone sometime today if it hasn't already done so.
In addition to the 6.59 million enrollees via the federal exchange which were just confirmed within the past hour or so, today has also seen updates from Minnesota, Kentucky and Massachusetts. Plug all of those into the Spreadsheet and the confirmed, official total has now reached 7.56 million nationally.
Tack on an estimated 960K renewals (active & automatic) from California, around 330K from New York, along with another 150K or so from the past week or two across various states (remember, some state exchanges such as Idaho haven't updated their numbers for as long as 24 days), and I'm quite confident that the 9 million mark has been reached. As always, see The Graph (also posted below) for a visual representation of where things stand and where they should be headed.
MNsure will release 2015 enrollment metrics weekly, and will present a more robust metrics summary to the MNsure Board of Directors at each regularly-scheduled board meeting. During weeks that MNsure is closed on Friday, the enrollment metrics update will be released earlier in the week.
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments Medical Assistance 29,936
MinnesotaCare 12,225
Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 41,704
TOTAL 83,865
The major change here isn't so much new QHPs (just 1,844 of the increase) as the autorenewals (or "passive renewals" as MNsure calls them) which made up 8,701 of the total:
Updated @MNsure enrollments: 83,865 total. 41,704 in QHP (8,701 of which are passive renewal), 12,225 in MinnesotaCare and 29,936 in MA
In the post-deadline, post-holiday period, Massachusetts seems to be settling into a pattern: Around 6,000 total eligibility determinations per day during the week, around 2,000/day on weekends. Of those, around 60% of them tend to be Medicaid enrollments, the other 40% for private policies (QHPs, which also include "ConnectorCare" in this case).
Yesterday there were another 6,508 added; 3,760 were immediately enrolled in MassHealth (Medicaid). The other 2,748 were for QHP applicants. As always, assuming at least 50% of those also selected a plan, that should tack another 1,400 to the total, bringing it to around 86,400 or so, while total Medicaid enrollments are now up to over 157K.
...The plaintiffs’ premise in King is that Obamacare was never intended to offer credits to people in states with federally-run exchanges. Indeed, by reading one passage of the Affordable Care Act out of context, they claim that the law unambiguously states that only state-run exchanges are allowed to provide tax credits.
But that’s not the conclusion Walker reached after spending a couple of years considering the question. Rather, in his interview with theWall Street Journal, Walker explains that there is no practical difference whatsoever between state-run and federally-run exchanges:
Ahead of the latest weekly report from HC.gov, Gallup reports that:
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The uninsured rate among U.S. adults for the fourth quarter of 2014 averaged 12.9%. This is down slightly from 13.4% in the third quarter of 2014 and down significantly from 17.1% a year ago. The uninsured rate has dropped 4.2 percentage points since the Affordable Care Act's requirement for Americans to have health insurance went into effect one year ago.
The uninsured rate declined sharply in the first and second quarters last year as more Americans signed up for health insurance through federal and state exchanges. After the open enrollment period closed in mid-April, the rate leveled off at around 13%. The 12.9% who lacked health insurance in the fourth quarter is the lowest Gallup and Healthways have recorded since beginning to track the measure daily in 2008. The 2015 open enrollment period began in the fourth quarter on Nov. 15 and will close on Feb. 15.
