We're over 1/3 of the way through the 2019 Open Enrollment Period in most states, so I figured this would be a good time to check in and see where things stand.
DENVER — More than 25,000 Coloradans selected health coverage through Connect for Health Colorado® between Nov. 1 and Nov. 15, a number 13 percent ahead of the pace one year ago, according to new data released today.
“This number of initial sign-ups is the strongest start to an Open Enrollment Period we have seen,” said Connect for Health Colorado® CEO Kevin Patterson. “By acting early, these Coloradans will ensure their health coverage is in place Jan. 1, 2019, protecting their health and their family finances.”
The two-week period saw 25,614 medical plan selections. The total was 22,650 medical plan selections for the comparable period in 2017. Twelve percent of the plan selections are by customers who are new to Connect for Health Colorado and 88 percent are renewing customers.
The midterms are over, and the Democrats won back the U.S. House, so the ACA is (mostly) safe at last, right?
Well...maybe. In addition to the ongoing regulatory sabotage by the Trump Administration to undermine, weaken and generally piss all over the law as much as possible, there's also still a little thing called Texas vs. Azar, aka the #TexasFoldEm federal lawsuit. Oral arguments were held way back in early September, and right-wing Judge O'Connor claimed that he'd rule on a preliminary injunction "quickly" afterwards.
Well, today is November 18th, and there's been nary a peep from Judge O'Connor. Does 75 days later count as "quickly"? In judiciary time, I suppose it might.
HARTFORD, CT — The number of customers purchasing plans through Connecticut’s insurance exchange is around what it was last year in the first two weeks of open enrollment.
Since Nov. 1, 12,777 customers have shopped and purchased a plan for 2019, according to Access Health CT officials. That means about 85,000 enrollees have yet to renew into a 2019 policy.
...Traffic on the website is trending about 18 percent higher than it was at this time last year, according to Access Health CT’s Director of Technical Operations and Analytics Robert Blundo.
...An estimated 60 percent of customers are picking plans that are different from their plan in 2018 and that’s compared to only 18 percent who were changing their plans last year. It also means there are a higher percentage of customers using brokers to help them make a decision about the health plan that’s right for them.
Illinois Senate voted unanimously to override the Governor's veto of a bill to limit short-term health plans to 6 months. Protecting consumers and insurance markets from long-term short-term plans does not appear to be a partisan issue. https://t.co/fJ4NVV4LRQ
FULL DISCLOSURE: HealthSherpa has a paid banner ad at the top of ACASignups.net.
As I noted last week, HealthSherpa is indeed a paying advertiser on the site. However, since they happen to specialize specifically in selling ACA-compliant individual market policies through the ACA exchange (they're an authorized 3rd-party online brokerage), they're also an excellent "finger on the pulse" of Open Enrollment data, providing more-detailed weekly data than CMS usually does; I'd be posting their stats whether they were an advertiser or not.
Hey, remember this? That's Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver Paul Ryan and his motley crew yucking it up right after voting to strip away healthcare coverage from 23 million people on May 4, 2017 by passing the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which not only most repealed the ACA but also gutted Medicaid spending and a bunch of other nasty stuff.
Well, what goes around comes around, which the House Democrats clearly knew at the time; as you can hear in the video, they were actually singing "Hey, hey, goodbye!" to the House Republicans immediately after the vote, because they knew exactly what the consequences would be of passing that pile of elephant poop.
Sure enough, exactly 551 days later, the 2018 Midterm Elections caused a Big Blue Wave to crash over the House GOP.
In week two of the 2019 Open Enrollment, 804,556 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform. As in past years, enrollment weeks are measured Sunday through Saturday. Consequently, the cumulative totals reported in this snapshot reflect one fewer day than last year.
Every week during Open Enrollment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release enrollment snapshots for the HealthCare.gov platform, which is used by the Federally-facilitated Exchanges and some State-based Exchanges. These snapshots provide point-in-time estimates of weekly plan selections, call center activity, and visits to HealthCare.gov or CuidadoDeSalud.gov.
The final number of plan selections associated with enrollment activity during a reporting period may change due to plan modifications or cancellations. In addition, the weekly snapshot only reports new plan selections and active plan renewals and does not report the number of consumers who have paid premiums to effectuate their enrollment.
More than 97,000 Minnesotans have signed up for private health plans through MNsure since the start of open enrollment
Open enrollment runs until January 13, 2019
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Today MNsure announced that over 97,000 Minnesotans have signed up for private health plan coverage through MNsure during the first two weeks of open enrollment.
MNsure's open enrollment runs until January 13, 2019. For coverage that begins January 1, 2019, Minnesotans must enroll by December 15, 2018.
“We are excited with our smooth start to open enrollment and that over 97,000 Minnesotans have signed up for private health plans,” said CEO Nate Clark. “With rates decreasing from 7 to 27 percent across the state, we encourage Minnesotans to visit MNsure.org to see if they can save.”
Over at Bloomberg News, Aziza Kasumov has written up what is, for the most part, an excellent profile of a middle-class family who crystalize the single biggest real flaw in the design of the Affordable Care Act (as opposed to the bullshit ones made up by opponents over the years): Those enrolled in individual market policies who earn more than 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (around $48,000/year for an individual, or $98,000 for a family of four):
David and Maribel Maldonado seem the very definition of making it in America. David arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a small child...His wife Maribel, whose family is also from Mexico, worked as a hairstylist while caring for the couple’s two children. David’s annual salary reached about $113,000 by the time the children were in their teens. It was more than enough to live in a pretty suburban house outside Dallas, take family vacations, go to restaurants and splurge at the nearby mall. And to afford health insurance.
The bold-faced bit above has some relevance later in the story.
