And voila, with the quarterly earnings conference call for WellPoint Insurance, we have our first clue as to just how many ACA-compliant policies have been sold directly via the insurance companies instead of being run through Healthcare.gov and/or the state-based exchanges: Around 95,000 nationally:
Of the half million new members Wellpoint said that have applied for coverage so far, more than 80 percent came through public exchanges and two-thirds of those were “subsidy eligible.”
Unfortunately, these are pretty rough numbers--"half million" could be as few as around 490,000 or as high as perhaps 520,000, and "more than 80%" could mean anywhere from 81 - 83%, but for the moment I'll assume 81% out of 500,000, which means 19% off-exchange.
Oh, and no, these should not include any of the "1-year extensions of non-compliant/junk accounts" which the Obama administration has been allowing; the article specifies these as new members of WellPoint, not renewals/extensions of existing policies.
According to a report issued last July by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, if all states accepted Medicaid Expansion the number of uninsured would be reduced by an additional ten million people. The comprehensive report noted, however, that 4.9 million of those people were living in states that had refused the expansion and another 1.5 million were in states that had not yet decided.
Why have many governors refused the offer of the federal government to fund 100% of the expansion for three years, and 90% thereafter until 2022? Among other reasons, the governors claim they cannot depend on the promise of federal funding, but they rarely state their main concern: the possibility that a large number of additional regular Medicaid clients will come "out of the woodwork." These are people who could have qualified previously under the regular Medicaid rules but never enrolled, perhaps because they did not know about the system, did not realize they might qualify, or did not know how to find out. As reported by NPR in 2012: "what really has many state leaders worried is something called the 'woodwork effect.' When big parts of the health law go into force in 2014, they worry it will bring out of the woodwork the millions of people who are already eligible for Medicaid but aren't already enrolled."
It appears that many people have indeed been signing up for regular Medicaid because of the publicity about healthcare.gov and the state exchanges, as well as an easier, streamlined enrollment process required by the ACA. Evidence of the woodwork effect can be found in the latest CMS report. For states with Medicaid Expansion, there was an average increase of 14.4% in Medicaid applications Oct-Dec compared to the July-Sept average. For states not expanding Medicaid, there was an average decrease of 10.1% during the same period. This decrease may reflect a typical seasonal pattern, which makes the 14.4% increase in the Expansion states even more remarkable.
States refusing Medicaid Expansion fear the woodwork effect because the federal government pays a much smaller share of the costs of regular Medicaid: from 73 percent in a poor state like Mississippi, for example, to 50 percent for states such as Wyoming, California and Connecticut. When it comes to paying its share of Medicaid costs, the federal government will have to require that states distinguish clearly between regular Medicaid clients and the "non-elderly", non-disabled, childless, low-income adults between the ages of 19-64 who are newly enrolled because of Medicaid Expansion.
Currently, these states (plus DC) are expanding Medicaid:
AZ, AR, CA, CO, DE, HI, IL, IA, KY, MD, MA, MI, MN, MA, NV, NJ, OH, UT, NM, NY, ND, OR, RI, VT, WA, WV
States that may expand Medicaid or accept a modified version in 2014:
IN, KS, ME, NH, OK, PA, TN, VA, WY
Regarding the latter group, a recent article says "an unusual alliance of powerful hospital, business and religious interests has been leaning on Republican leaders to reverse course." It is probable that as the benefits of Medicaid Expansion to a state's budget become increasingly evident, such as less uncompensated care, more states will accept Medicaid Expansion despite their initial objections.
Good Morning! I have some mid-level changes to both spreadsheets this morning which visitors should be aware of:
--On the Private QHP Spreadsheet, I've replaced the very rough percent-based "Total Uninsured" numbers with the raw numbers from the same Kaiser Family Foundation table. Again, this is the same source, I'm just using the raw number view now instead of the percent view. In addition, using percentages were based on the July 2013 census estimates, while the KFF numbers are based on 2011-2012 population totals. Combine this with the percentages being previously rounded off, this resulted in some significant differences in the state numbers.
For example, at the high end, the California number changed from around 7.6 million to only 7.1 million, a half-million difference! Meanwhile, at the low end, Vermont has "dropped" from 57,000 uninsured prior to October 1st to just 47,900…which makes the original CMS projection for Vermont (also 57,000) all the more absurd.
OK, no press release or private/public breakdown yet, but the home page of New York's health exchange website is displaying a total of 351,605, up from 328,796 as of January 20.
Assuming the same 67/33 split that their previous exchange enrollments have followed, that means roughly 15,400 private enrollments and another 7,409 added to Medicaid/CHIP. I'll adjust these numbers as appropriate once a formal press release comes out.
In addition, this is the first update that takes us beyond January 23 (the date of the "3 Million" announcement), so only about half of that 15,400 will be subtracted from the "Not Broken Out Yet" amount. And with that, we've moved onto Week 17.
Washington State just released their latest official update, and as usual, they do a fantastic job of breaking down the numbers in an easy-to-follow manner, especially on the Medicaid/CHIP side.
Private QHP enrollments are up from a total of 149K (73,098 paid, 76,058 unpaid) as of 01/09 to about 168K (86,031 paid, 81,872 unpaid) as of 01/23, a 12.7% increase in 2 weeks.
Medicaid enrollments are up from a total of 198K (134,700 via Medicaid Expansion + 63,070 "Out of the Woodwork" folks who were previously qualified but weren't already enrolled) as of 01/09 to a total of almost 238K (160,587 expansion + 77,144 "woodwork") as of 01/23. This represents a 20% increase.
Between these and the other recent updates, the grand totals now stand at 3.16M Private QHPs and 7.38M Medicaid/CHIP enrollees. It's also important to stress that the Medicaid number does not include renewals of existing Medicaid/CHIP recipients.
I've written about this in passing before, but after repeated requests about the subject, I've decided to devote a full blog entry about the serious problems inherent in the CMS's state-level Private QHP projection numbers.
As far as I can tell, while the national "7 million" private enrollment projection figure issued by the CBO was based on solid analysis of the demographic situation at the time, the state-level CMS projection breakdown is, in many cases, based on little more than educated guesswork.
In general, the enrollment targets provided by state- based Marketplaces are more ambitious than the initial Department enrollment targets for those specific states. As a result, using the publicly available SBM targets without adjusting other states would have raised the projected number of 2014 Marketplace enrollees by 1.4 million; therefore, the Marketplace ramp-up rates for other states were revised downward accordingly to maintain the 7 million total.
Contributor deaconblues provides an interesting Rhode Island update. While the standard Private QHP and Medicaid/CHIP numbers haven't changed from what I already had listed (although the paid QHP number has increased slightly), there's also the addition of 4,311 RIte Care parents automatically enrolled in RI's non-profit Neighborhood Health Plan.
As deaconblue notes, "Rite Care looks like it fully covers the premium for up to 150% FPL and offers premium assistance to those between 150% and 250%...the context implies that all of the 4,311 should be somewhere under QHP - if some of these plans were fully paid by the state, would they have appeared as an asterisked note under the Medicaid Enrollments section?"
I see his point, but at the same time, seeing how it fully covers the cost up to 150% FPL while even the ACA's Medicaid expansion only goes up to 133%, it really sounds like the vast majority of these folks should be categorized on the Medicaid/CHIP side. I'll look into it and may move some or all of these over to the Private QHP side later, but for the moment I'm listing them as "Medicaid/CHIP".
Meanwhile, I've been informed that Washington State only has their SHOP program running in 2 counties, while Maryland's won't be operational until April (SHOP enrollments are open year-round, while individual/family enrollments are only available through 3/31).
As of Jan. 15, 368 people had purchased insurance through New Mexico’s SHOP (Small Business Health Options Program) exchange for small businesses.
...So far, 370 people have enrolled in insurance plans on the SHOP exchange, according to the NMHIX. A total of 1,542 employers have set up accounts on the exchange and they represent 3,962 employees.
Kentucky continues to slowly but steadily increase their tally, hitting 19% of their CMS projection target with 42,000 private QHP enrollees as of last Thursday. The 2,200 new additions have been subtracted from the "Not broken out by state" pool, bringing that total down to 486,500. Again, any new exchange enrollees which are added up through Jan. 23 will be subtracted from this since it fills out the "3 million" total announced by Kathleen Sebelius last week.
Meanwhile, on the Medicaid side, Kentucky added another 12,000 new enrollees, bringing them up to 189,000 when you add the 55K direct additions. It's important to note that according to the CMS reports, these people should all be new to Medicaid, not renewed accounts.
As of Thursday, according to the state, 176,000 Kentuckians have signed up for health insurance.
So far 42,000 have signed up for private insurance, or roughly 14 percent of the total number of uninsured Kentuckians. That compares to 134,000, or 44 percent of those eligible, who have signed up for Medicaid.
Some minor updates buried in the MNsure Board of Directors report; thanks to an anonymous tipster for calling my attention to it. Nothing major, but some small updates to both the Private QHP and Medicaid/CHIP enrollment figures (27,775 and 52,225 respectively). The most noteworthy addition is the 475 SHOP (Small Business marketplace) enrollments noted on page 27 of the report.
