Now that we're past the official (and extended) deadlines for January coverage in most states, I no longer have to add the auto-renewal caveat for states which "pre-loaded" them such as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Having said that, Rhode Island, which already had one of the later deadlines in the first place, just bumped it out even later...all the way out through tonight (12/29).

Having such a small population, Rhode Island's latest update doesn't have much impact nationally, but it's still worth noting the weekly trend (remember, today's update still doesn't include the final 3 days of their extended deadline):

INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 26, 2015:

Between the #RiskCorridorMassacre which helped wipe out a dozen ACA-created Co-Ops and UnitedHealthcare's peculiarly-timed panic attack last month, the conventional wisdom is that the ACA exchanges are causing health insurance carriers to go bankrupt by the bedpan-full, sapping their precious bodily fluids like a woman having sex with Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper.

According to Mark Farrah Associates and Allison Bell of LifeHealthPro, however, it turns out that the reality isn't quite that lopsided:

Some insurers said they were doing fine, and the biggest insurers reported solid 2014 profits.

...Mark Farrah Associates (MFA) has now published a review of 2014 medical loss ratio (MLR) data that implies that carriers in some states might have done a good job of setting premiums at a high enough level to generate underwriting gains.

Regular site visitors know that I spent several months last fall poring over various insurance carrier rate filings in order to patch together, as best as I could, a rough idea of the weighted average premium rate increases for each state (and nationally) based on the average rate hikes by individual carriers, weighted by their market share by effectuated enrollees.

This project was helped to some degree by the introduction of the HealthCare.Gov Rate Review Database, where you can easily search for different carriers by state/other criteria and find out what their average rate hikes (proposed and, later on, approved) will be for 2016.

Unfortunately, as I noted last June, there's a catch: The Rate Review site only included requested rate hikes greater than 10%. This was a serious problem for a couple of reasons:

Last week I asked "How many HC.gov auto-renewals are left to be added?" I noted that 5.86 million current exchange enrollees have been confirmed to have been renewed/re-enrolled via the federal exchange (71% of 8.25 million total), and that there could theoretically be up to 680K left to be auto-renewed, assuming that the currently-effectuated number is indeed still 9.1 million nationally:

The 9/30/15 number isn't what's relevant here; what we need to know is the December number. For that, HHS is still quite insistent that it'll end up being 9.1 million. While I was more optimistic earlier this year (I assumed it'd still be close to 9.7 million nationally as of now), it's pretty obvious that the attrition rate has indeed been higher than I figured, so I'll go with their 9.1 million.

If so, and assuming the federal-to-SBM ratio has remained the same, that suggests that as of December, HC.gov states are down to 6.54 million people as of today.

I finally found time to take my wife and son to see "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" over the weekend. It wasn't perfect, of course, but it was still amazingly good; easily better than the Godawful Prequels, and somewhat better than Return of the Jedi. I'd call it on par with the original (nothing can match Empire Strikes Back, of course).

Anyway, I've seen lamentations from a few people who are under the impression that they're "the only one" who hasn't seen it yet. However, aside from the simple fact that more than one person stating this means, by definition, that they're not the only one, perhaps this will make those folks feel better:

So sayeth James Bond creator Ian Fleming.

A week ago, American Enterprise Fellow and right-wing BS artist Scott Gottlieb (MD) tried to make it look like the 2016 Open Enrollment numbers were lagging behind last year by deliberately ignoring a) the 2-week enrollment period differential and b) the millions (at least 2.28 million) of auto-renewals which were added to the total just days after his claim.

While the number of auto-renewals ended up being a bit lower than I expected, they still brought the 2016 same-point comparison up from Gottlieb's claim of 36% behind 2015 to 25% ahead...with an unknown additional number of auto-renewals (I'm guessing around 150K) yet to be added over the next week or so.

I ran a version of this last year, and the response was positive enough that I've decided to do it again for the third year of open enrollment. Anyone who's into data visualization should find this pretty interesting.

What I've done here is to take the 2014, 2015 and 2016 ACA Exchange Open Enrollment Period graphs and lay them on top of each other. It's important to keep in mind that these are for the open enrollment periods only.

Since 2014's period was 197 days (182 official, plus a 15 day "overtime" period), I've scaled it down to match 2015's 100 day period (93 days + 7 day overtime period) and 2016's 92 day period (I'm assuming there won't be any "overtime" this year, but could be wrong).

"Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces
While handicapped people make handicapped faces."
--Denis Leary, "Asshole"

A couple of weeks ago I noted that newly inaugurated Republican Governor of Kentucky Matt Bevin was, true to his word during the campaign, making the destruction of kynect, the Bluegrass State's ACA healthcare exchange, one of his first and highest priorities.

Never mind that the exchange has (unlike most of the other ACA exchange sites) operated pretty much flawlessly since day one.

Never mind that thanks to the ACA and kynect, the uninsured rate in Kentucky has been slashed by more than half over the past two years, from over 20% down to 9%.

Never mind that the "kynect" branding has been an unprecedented and award-winning success.

Several people have recently asked me whether I plan on adjusting my official projection of 14.7 million QHP selections (nationally) as of the end of the 2016 Open Enrollment Period.

On the one hand, the total numbers to date sound pretty impressive, and over 20 states are running well ahead of my projections so far (Massachusetts & Maryland have already hit my targets; SD, UT, RI, MT & TN are close behind). On the other hand, I'm also starting to see some worrying signs in a few large states, particularly Texas, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Here's an irony for you: Take a look at what the state-by-state chart looks like when you divide it into the states which are currently above where I expected them to be right now and those which are behind (remember, 5 states aren't listed at all, since they haven't provided any data at all or only very limited in the case of California):

On top of the other big two data drops today (the Week Seven HC.gov Snapshot and the Q3 Effectuated Enrollment Report), CMS decided to really pile on the data just ahead of Christmas 

Open Enrollment Trends: Selected HealthCare.gov Statistics prior to the January 1, 2016 Coverage Deadline

Since Open Enrollment began on November 1, millions of Americans have learned about the financial help available and selected quality plans through the Marketplace for 2016. While six weeks remain before the final deadline, early consumer behavior and enrollment trends are beginning to surface. The following charts provide a preliminary analysis of plan selections ahead of the deadline for January 1 coverage through the HealthCare.gov platform.