Once the dust settled on the 2014 and 2015 Open Enrollment periods, only a handful of state exchanges bothered continuing to report off-season exchange enrollments, but I was able to extrapolate those numbers pretty accurately nationwide: Around 7,500 people per day were still signing up via Special Enrollment Periods throughout the summer/fall of 2014, and around 8,500 per day did so last year (not including the time-limited #ACATaxTime SEP from mid-March through the end of April 2015).
This year, that number is expected to drop somewhat due to HHS supposedly cracking down on SEPs in both variety and eligibility verification, but I still wouldn't be surprised if at least, say, 6,000 people per day end up signing up between now and next November (or around 1.6 million total, give or take).
Anyway, even the state exchanges which did keep posting updates generally only did so monthly...which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Rhode Island exchange appears to be sticking to their Weekly Enrollment Report guns even after the dust has settled:
I'm swamped with day job stuff today, but this email just came through:
On the Oriely Factor it was indicated that you propose taking away social security benefits. I paid into ssi from age 13 to age 67. I support your ur champagne with donations and support your conditional approach. Please do not take my earned SSI
It took me a few minutes to figure out how this ended up in my in box, but then I realized: TedCrooz.com
As far as I can tell, this poor soul...
a) Mistook this website for that of Ted Cruz's, even though it's pretty obvious that it has no connection to his campaign whatsoever.
b) Watches The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News (he appears to be in at least his late 60's, so no shocker there)
c) Is (or was, until now) a supporter of Ted Cruz, to the point that he's apparently made financial donations to his campaign.
d) Is now, however, deeply concerned about Ted Cruz taking away his Social Security benefits, which he paid into for 54 years.
At first, I started to chuckle a little at his error and the "champagne" misspelling...but the more I thought about it, this is just plain sad and anger-inducing.
In all, 116,019 Connecticut residents signed up for private insurance through the state’s health insurance exchange, Access Health CT, during the open enrollment period that ended last week, officials said Monday.
That figure is slightly higher than the 110,095 who signed up during last year’s enrollment period and exchange officials’ goal for this year of signing up 105,000 to 115,000.
Connecticut only improved over last year by about 5.4%, but much of that is because, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, CT only had around 62,000 uninsured people eligible for APTC assistance to begin with (they also have around 100K more uninsured who'd have to pay full price if they enrolled via the exchanges, but those people can get the same policies off-exchange anyway, and many very well might have done just that).
Emails released last week by the State Department that were found on Mrs. Clinton’s private server show that she was keenly interested in the administration’s push to win passage of the health care law.
...The email messages show that throughout the fall of 2009, as the health care push entered a decisive phase, Mrs. Clinton lobbied some members of Congress for votes and even debated sometimes-esoteric policy proposals with aides, some of whom had worked with her in the White House when she was first lady, after her own failed attempt to push a national health care overhaul.
...Congressional officials who worked on the Affordable Care Act said that Mrs. Clinton was an important and effective advocate.
About 316,000 households that got tax credits paid to them in advance but did not file any return at all last year. Before the healthcare law, many low-income people were not required to file taxes. Now they must do so if they got a subsidy. But if taxpayers don't realize it, that can create mix-ups.
Some 976,000 households that got tax credits and filed 2014 returns, but omitted a new form that is the key to accounting for their subsidies. Called Form 8962, it was introduced for the 2015 tax filing season.
About 147,000 households that had requested extensions to file their 2014 taxes, but never followed through.
For the past few weeks, I've been pointing out some of the reasons why a wholesale replacement of the entire U.S. healthcare system with a universal, comprehensive, single payer system in one shot (or even a short-term series of shots) would be absurdly improbable to happen even if Bernie Sanders not only won the Presidency (which, unlike some people, I do think could happen), but also somehow managed to along solidly progressive majorities in both the House and Senate (which, I'm sorry, I just don't). I then took a closer look at the ideas which Hillary Clinton has proposed so far, and found them to be important but mostly minor improvements.
Hmmm...OK, I guess "as of today" means I need to make the "thru date" 2/04/16 instead of 1/31 or 2/01, but whatever; the point is that this is Kentucky's final official total.
Kynect's total was 81,121 as of 12/26, so they only added about 12,500 more since Christmas. 93,687 is only around 75% of the 125K I was expecting, and is over 12,600 fewer private enrollees than they had last year, making them one of only 8 states to drop their open enrollment total.
So...what went wrong? Well, from the HHS Dept's POV, nothing...or at least nothing that they didn't already project last October. They had already openly stated that they didn't expect any dramatic exchange enrollment increases this year, giving a wide open enrollment range of 11.0 - 14.1 million QHP selections...which has a mid-range of 12.6 million.
The better question is how I managed to be off by so much, overestimating (originally) by a whopping 2 million people, Obviously I can't be expected to nail every number, but that would be the least-accurate projection I've had to date (overshooting by 15.7%).
There's still a handful of enrollees left to be added to the state-level numbers (perhaps 60K or so collectively), but it's time to look at the major reasons for the shortfall.
Some of these are well-documented criticisms: Premiums and/or deductibles are simply too damned high for many policies/regions in general. This post is not about price/affordability issues, however; this is about more specific factors.
First, let's take a look at the state-by-state enrollment table, sorted highest to lowest in terms of how well each did vs. my personal projections:
The final numbers (through either 1/31, 2/01 or 2/02 depending on the state) are now in for 44 states plus DC. There are still 6 states which are missing some enrollment data:
Your Health Idaho informs me that their official final OE3 total won't be announced until after February 15th, but here's a quick mini-update:
More than 97,000 Idahoans Select Insurance through Idaho Exchange
Lawmakers Get Update on Your Health Idaho’s Progress
BOISE, Idaho – Your Health Idaho executive director Pat Kelly went before lawmakers on Tuesday to give them an update on the second year of operations for Idaho’s state-based health insurance exchange. Kelly said Idahoans have benefitted from state lawmakers’ choice to keep the federal government out of Idaho’s health insurance decisions.
Currently, more than 97,000 Idahoans have selected a health insurance plan through the exchange. In 2015, Idaho ranked fourth in the nation per-capita for enrollments and had the highest enrollment numbers of any state-based health insurance exchange.
YHI also makes a strong case for keeping full state exchanges as opposed to moving to HealthCare.Gov (Matt Bevin of Kentucky might want to take notice...):
