Thanks to Richard Mayhew for calling my attention to this item. He titled his piece "Technically True Bullshit", and while I tried to come up with a more clever (clever-er?) title, I couldn't do it.
In other words, like Massachusetts, Maryland has already hit the target for the 2016 Open Enrollment just halfway through the period. The difference is that Massachusetts never really issued their own formal target (well, OK, technically Maryland needs 235 more people...)
The Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment period will end on Jan. 31, but the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that only a small share of people without health insurance realize it.
Just 7 percent of the uninsured correctly identify January as the deadline to enroll; another 20 percent say the deadline is at the end of 2015, while everyone else either says they don’t know, gives another date or says the deadline has already passed.
Covered California Experiences Record-Breaking Enrollment for Consumers Seeking Jan. 1 Coverage
More than 55,000 Sign Up Over Two Days As Covered California Extends Deadline for Consumers
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced Wednesday that more than 197,000 consumers had enrolled in health care coverage by the end of Tuesday, Dec. 15, including more than 22,000 on Monday and more than 32,000 on Tuesday.
The two-day total of more than 55,000 surpassed the enrollment figures seen last year during the same two day period when more than 35,000 people signed up for coverage on Dec. 14-15, 2014.
“The interest we have seen over the last two days is further proof of the continued demand that Californians have for quality, affordable health care coverage,” said Covered California Executive Director Peter V. Lee. “We want to make sure that everyone who is working to get in the door has the time they need to get the coverage they deserve.”
Week 6 Projection: 1.50 Million / Actual: 1.33 Million (over by 13%)
Cumulative Projection: 4.34 Million / Actual: 4.17 Million (over by 4%)
Given the crazy developments of the past day or so, combined with the auto-renewal factor, things are kind of fuzzy this week. I'm gonna hold tight and assume roughly 4.3 million QHPsincluding auto-renewals will be added to the mix by Saturday, bringing HC.gov up to a total of 8.5 million by Saturday, December 19th.
However, there's a major caveat here: I have no idea how many auto-renewals will be added, so I could easily be off by as much as a half a million or so this week.
Update 12/18/15: Not really an update so much as a clarification: I'm guessing active QHP selections for this week via HC.gov could run anywhere between 1.0 - 2.0 million, plus another 2.5 - 3.5 million automatic renewals, for a weekly total of between 3.5 - 5.5 million.
REMEMBER, as always, that this only includes the 38 states included on the federal exchange; when you throw in the other 13 running their own exchanges, the grand total (assuming I'm in the ballpark) should be roughly 11.3 million QHPs nationally by the end of the week.
I launched the "State by State" chart feature towards the end of the 2015 Open Enrollment period last time around, and it proved to be pretty popular, so I've brought it back this year.
It's important to note that I'm still missing data from some state exchanges; I have bupkis from DC, Idaho, Kentucky, New York and Vermont. I also only have partial data from others (California includes new enrollees only, while several other states only have data for the first couple of weeks).
In addition, there are three states (Connecticut, Rhode Island and Washington State) where I have the opposite situation--they've front-loaded their autorenewals of current enrollees, with the understanding that those folks can still drop their coverage or switch to a different policy between now and December 15th (CT) or December 23rd (RI & WA).
With all those caveats out of the way, here's where things stand. Just like last year:
I'm sticking to my guns for Week 6, projecting an even 1.5 million QHP selections via HealthCare.Gov, bringing the grand total to 4.34 million as of 12/12.
REMEMBER, as always, that this only includes the 38 states included on the federal exchange; when you throw in the other 13 running their own exchanges, the grand total by the 12th should be roughly 5.76 million QHPs nationally.
More than 1.3 million consumers signed-up for health coverage through the HealthCare.gov platform between December 6 and December 12, the last full week before the deadline for January 1 coverage, bringing the total number of plan selections made since Open Enrollment began on November 1 to 4.17 million consumers. Approximately 500,000 were new consumers, for a cumulative total of about 1.5 million new consumers since the beginning of Open Enrollment.
As I note every week, between Rhode Island's tiny population, tinier ACA exchange numbers and especially their decision to "front-load" autorenewals of all current enrollees ahead of the 12/23 deadline for January coverage, their official QHP selection tally is only going up a few hundred per week. Week Six is no diffferent:
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 12, 2015:
With all that in mind, as of October 25th, no matter how I slice it, the national weighted average increase for 2016 seems to be somewhere between 12% - 13%.
