From an AccessHealthCT press release:

ACCESS HEALTH CT PROVIDES TRANSITIONAL MEDICAL ASSISTANCE ENROLLMENT UPDATE
2,846 individuals have enrolled in a new healthcare plan

Hartford, Conn. (July 8, 2016) - Access Health CT (AHCT) CEO Jim Wadleigh provided an update today on enrollment of approximately 13,811 parents and caregivers who will lose their Transitional Medical Assistance (TMA) on July 31st when they no longer meet the HUSKY A eligibility requirements due to a change in legislation last year. As of July 7, 2016, 2,846 individuals have enrolled in a new healthcare plan via the exchange. Of those, 1,966 applications have been re-determined eligible for coverage in a HUSKY program through the integrated eligibility system with the Department of Social Services, and 880 have enrolled in a Qualified Health Plan (QHP) with AHCT.

I've been trying to figure out how to read Connect for Health Colorado's enrollment reports for months now, and I thought I had finally cleared things up last month....only to have that rug completely yanked out from under me by CMS's Q1 Effectuation Report, which stated that C4HCO only had 108,311 people actually enrolled in effectuated healthcare policies as of 3/31/16 rather than the 115,890 they seemed to be reporting at the time...which, combined with other confusing numbers, made the May report's 143,430 figure seem awfully suspicious.

Oy vey iz mir. Last fall, half of the two dozen Co-Ops created by the ACA were wiped out, falling like dominos over about a two month period, for a variety of reasons including the Risk Corridor Massacre. The other half managed to survive The Purge, many of them just barely doing so.

This year, it looks very much like the Risk Adjustment debacle has decided to try and finish off the job.

Just 3 days ago, the Connecticut Co-Op, HealthyCT, announced that they were folding up shop.

Just yesterday it was announced that the state of Illinois is taking unusual, last-ditch measures to attempt to salvage their co-op, Land of Lincoln Health.

And just moments ago, this was announced:

It's been several weeks since the most recent state was added to my 2017 requested rate change project (Michigan, with a weighted average of 17.2%). There are 15 states remaining...or rather 14 now, because Montana has finally posted their filings for 2017. Here's what the requested changes look like:

Montana's entire individual market was around 70,000 people back in 2014, and has likely grown to around 87,000 today, so it looks like pretty much everyone is accounted for above (the remaining 9,000 or so are presumably enrolled in grandfathered policies; Montana is among the few red states which didn't allow transitional plans).

As for the actual requested rate hikes...ouch. BCBS is seeking a whopping 62% average increase, and since they own 70% of the individual market, that means a statewide weighted average of right around 50% even. Things aren't as ugly on the small group market, but that 27.5% average is still pretty ugly.

All last fall I documented the saga of the Risk Corridor Massacre, which helped to wipe out a dozen ACA-created co-ops and put many of the remaining ones (along with some private carriers) on shaky ground.

Earlier this week I noted that one of the remaining co-ops, HealthyCT of Connecticut, is the latest to go belly-up...due in large part to a different program, "Risk Adjustment". The irony in both cases is that both programs were supposed to be designed specifically to help ensure that "little guy startups" such as the co-ops would be protected from dissolution during the unstable first few years of the ACA exchanges. Instead, developments in both programs have served to help destroy them.

As I noted the other day, the Risk Adjustment program seems to be backfiring:

As Richard Mayhew noted a few days ago over at Balloon Juice:

OK, regular readers know that I almost never write directly about Medicare-related issues (unless it's in relation to trying to figure out the total uninsured rate and so forth), and I've only even mentioned Medigap before 3 times in the history of this website. I honestly don't know much about the program except that it's basically supplemental insurance which covers treatment/services not already covered by Medicare.

However, this seems like a significant development for my home state:

Seniors can expect to pay an additional $48 to $177 per month on BCBS Medigap plans.

Nearly 200,000 seniors can expect to pay more for their Medigap supplemental health insurance plans next year -- for some older individuals, more than twice their current amount -- when Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan goes forward with a long-awaited rate increase that does away with what the insurer says are below-market rates.

Blue Cross today proposed the new Medigap rates that would take effect on Jan. 1, following a five-year rate freeze for its Legacy Medigap plan.

Some Guy, March 1st, 2016

So here it is...Super Tuesday. Unless the GOP base suddenly decides that they don't want a xenophobic, misogynistic, hate-mongering, con-artist moron to be their standard-bearer, it's looking very likely that by the time midnight rolls around, Donald Drumpf will indeed be almost unstoppable as the Republican Presidential Nominee for 2016.

Which means, aside from the GOP establishment being on collective suicide watch, Mr. Drumpf will have to think about who his running mate will be for the general election.

...OK, so here's who this person has to be:

• NATURAL BORN U.S. CITIZEN
• 35 YEARS OLD
• YOUNG
• PHOTOGENIC
• FEMALE
• JEWISH
• TRUSTED IMPLICITLY

Which is why I present to you the only possible 2016 Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States....Ivanka Drumpf.

Thanks to commenter "M E" for bringing this up.

For years now, various healthcare writers, myself included, have noted that prior to the ACA exchange policies being implemented in January 2014, individual market insurance policy rates were typically increasing by an average of around 10-12% per year. This was based on several different sources, including studies like these:

• New Analysis of Health Insurance Premium Trends in the Individual Market Finds Average Yearly Increases of 10 Percent or More Prior to the Affordable Care Act (Commonwealth Fund, Jun 5, 2014)

• Trump: Obamacare health care premiums 'going up 35, 45, 55 percent' (PolitiFact, Oct. 25, 2015)
  ("On average, premiums have risen by about 5.8 percent a year since Obama took office, compared to 13.2 percent in the nine years before Obama.")

The DC exchange has this frustrating habit where they do issue regular, easy-to-read enrollment reports...but they keep using cumulative numbers since 2013 in those reports. I honestly have no idea why they do it this way; since people are constantly moving on and off of different types of coverage, and even those who keep the same policy have to renew those policies every year anyway, so reporting the multi-year cumulative number of enrollments makes about as much sense to me as Ford reporting how many cars they've sold since 1903.

However, by simply comparing the cumulative numbers against older cumulative numbers, I can use the difference to see how things are going during the off season, like so:

More Than 225,000 People Enrolled in Health Coverage Through DC Health Link from October 1, 2013 to June 10, 2016

OK, this blows. Last year, you'll recall that about a dozen of two dozen ACA-created Co-Ops melted down, one after another, throughout August, September and October. There were a lot of reasons behind their failure, but one of the biggest ones had to do with the infamous Risk Corridor Massacre brouhaha.

As I noted last fall, "Risk Corridors" were one of three programs put into place by the federal government which are intended to smooth the way for the insurance carriers as they try to navigate the rocky, uncertain terrain of the new health insurance landscape under the ACA. Two of the programs--Risk Corridors and Reinsurance--were never intended to last more than the first 3 years of the exchanges anyway (that is, they've always been scheduled to be discontinued at the end of 2016). Unfortunately, due to the GOP yanking the rug out from under the Risk Corridor program, only 13% of the money which was supposed to be paid out to the eligible carriers ever was last year, causing several co-ops (and at least one private carrier) to go belly-up...and leaving many of the remaining co-ops on very shaky financial ground.

The third program, "Risk Adjustment", is permanent. Risk Corridors were set up to shift funds from carriers which lost more than a certain amount of money from carriers which earned more than a certain amount of money. Risk Adjustment, on the other hand, is designed to shift funds from carriers which happened to enroll lower-risk enrollees to those which enrolled higher-risk enrollees. This may sound similar on the surface, and I'm assuming there's quite a bit of overlap between the two in practice, but that's an important distinction.