For the first time in a decade, high-ranking Georgia GOP legislators on Thursday convened a meeting to hear testimony on full Medicaid expansion to all the state’s poor people.
At the hearing Thursday, the idea was floated over whether to expand Medicaid in exchange for a political deal to roll back regulations that restrict who can open a new health care business. Those regulations are called Certificate of Need, or CON.
A week or so ago, when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued their first official "snapshot report" of the 2024 Open Enrollment Period, I noted that unlike most states which have seen dramatically higher initial enrollment numbers, Virginia saw a dramatic drop in initial 2-week enrollment:
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Virginia is running a whopping 64% behind their 2023 OEP enrollment at this point, almost certainly due to the state moving off of the federal exchange onto their own platform; since current enrollees have to actively log into a whole new account and go through a different interface to enroll for 2024, there's no doubt a lot of confusion at the moment. Hopefully this will straighten itself out by the time OEP ends, however.
The 2024 ACA Open Enrollment Period is going on right now and will continue through January 16th in most states. So far, I've confirmed that over 4.7 million Americans have enrolled in either ACA exchange Qualified Health Plan (QHP) policies nationally or Basic Health Plan (BHP) policies in New York & Minnesota specifically; the odd are that the combined total will be over 18.5 million by the time the dust settles in January.
BeWell NM, New Mexico's state-based ACA exchange, has launched a very handy new Enrollment Data portal which includes plenty of info for a data hound like myself to pore over. The initial 2024 Open Enrollment Period numbers are impressive...but also a bit misleading if you don't know how the exchange enters data.
First, the top line numbers (as of 11/26/23):
Number of enrolled consumers: 47,212
Consumers enrolled in Medical coverage: 46,614
Consumers enrolled in Dental coverage: 11,272
While dental coverage is also important, standalone dental plans aren't considered Qualified Health Plans (QHPs); it's the "Medical Coverage" which is the key number here.
Also, the total number above may look confusing, but most of the Medical & Dental coverage enrollees overlap:
By comparison, last year Access Health CT reported enrolling 87,161 people through Nov. 25th (one extra day since Nov. 1st fell on a Tuesday last year); this also included auto-renewals:
...The graph below shows how these numbers have increased since the same time period last year. I've had to adjust slightly for the fact that there's one fewer day included for both the federal exchange (18 days vs. 19) and the state exchanges (11 days vs. 12).
I've also had to adjust for the fact that Virginia moved from the federal exchange to its own state-based exchange this year, which is further complicated by CMS reporting 3 weeks for the federal exchange but only 2 weeks for state-based exchanges. I've done my best to adjust for all of these factors below (the subtotals are accurate; the new/returning breakout for 2023 are estimates but should be pretty close):
Back on November 9th, President Biden issued the first hint suggesting that the 2024 ACA Open Enrollment Period would be the most successful ever:
In the first week of Open Enrollment, 1.6 million people have signed up for a plan at HealthCare.Gov, including 301,000 new consumers – that’s a 50% increase from last year.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of the Health Insurance Marketplace (OHIM) will release biweekly updates on plan selections through CoverME.gov, Maine’s Health Insurance Marketplace.
Plan selections provide a snapshot of activity by new and returning consumers who have selected a plan for 2024. “Plan selections” become “enrollments” once consumers have paid their first monthly premium to begin insurance. These numbers are subject to change as consumers may modify or cancel plans after their initial selection.
The deadline to select a plan for coverage beginning January 1, 2024 is December 15, 2023. Consumers who select a plan between December 16, 2023 and January 16, 2024 will have coverage beginning February 1, 2024.
For ten years, Georgia has remained one of the states which, frustratingly, has refused to expand Medicaid to all adults earning up to 138% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL)...a bit over $20,000/year for a single adult; roughly $41,000/yr for a family of four.
If the state were to join most of the country, an estimated 434,000 Peach State residents would finally be able to enroll in comprehensive, nominal-cost healthcare coverage: Around 252,000 who earn less than 100% of FPL and another ~182,000 who earn between 100 - 138% FPL (the second batch
