In the midst of a pretty quiet week data-wise, the Washingotn HealthPlanFinder had a pleasant surprise: An extremely comprehensive enrollment report which breaks down their 2015 numbers every which way possible and, of particular importance to me, also includes data up through March 9th (as opposed to the Feb. 21st cut-off of most of the other state exchanges).
As an additional bonus, the accompanying press release also brings the QHP enrollment numbers even further up to date...right up through March 25th, I think (the PR doesn't specify the exact date of that number, but it's a few thousand higher than the enrollment report so I'm assuming it includes the 16 extra days).
You know, in the year and a half that I've been running this site, I've had a couple of "hit pieces" written about me online (the two which come to mind are the "Online Majority/Newsbusters" incident and the "Investor's Business Daily" piece) and have received plenty of email/comments from critics. However, I've never received a full-on, completely-disconnected-from-reality, frothing-at-the-mouth, speaking-in-tongues rant before...until now.
With that in mind, I present to you the email I received last night from one "Richard Frates" (I am, however, posting it as a series of images rather than the actual text since the last thing I need is for Google searches about this gibberish to bring up my site):
CLARIFICATION: A few folks have inquired whether this is simply an auto-generated spambot thing not directed at me personally (especially since there's nary a peep about the ACA in the blathering). This may be the case...except it was actually sent as a series of 4 contact form submissions in a row, over a 10 minute period. In other words, if it was a random submission, I'm pretty sure it was still done manually, not via auto-script.
“If you just do simple multiplication, 12 million [insured individuals] into $108 billion, we are talking literally every single [Obamacare] recipient would be costing this government more than $5 million per person for their insurance. It’s staggering….$108 billion for 12 million people is immoral. It’s unconscionable. ”
– Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), statement on the House floor, March 24, 2015
Glenn Kessler corrects his math, but...really, is it now necessary to do the arithmetic that my 3rd grade son was able to do in his head a year ago?
One day after announcing his plan to run for president and “repeal every word of Obamacare,” Ted Cruz confirmed that he plans on using Obamacare’s new state-level marketplace to enroll in coverage himself.
Because Cruz’s wife Heidi is joining his campaign full-time, she’s going on unpaid leave from her current job at Goldman Sachs. Earlier this week, CNN reported that the couple will lose the employer-sponsored plan through the company, and speculated that Cruz would likely be in the market for a new health care plan.
“We will presumably go on the exchange and sign up for health care and we’re in the process of transitioning over to do that,” Cruz told The Des Moines Register on Tuesday.
Gov. Peter Shumlin on Friday announced contingency plans for a federal government takeover of the state's troubled health insurance exchange and an alternative hybrid federal-state system.
Vermont Health Connect still isn't meeting its goals, and if it doesn't meet two key ones in the coming months, Vermont could scale back its handling of the project in favor of the federal government, Shumlin said. Those goals include:
One is about Ted "Joseph McCarthy Lookalike/Soundalike" Cruz being "hypocritical" by enrolling the ACA himself (this is mildly amusing, but people comply with laws they personally oppose all the time, so I'm not really making hay out of this one).
In any event, there you have it. IF the other 2/3 of the states follow similar retention patterns to the 1/3 I have data for, the current number enrolled in exchange QHPs as of this writing should be somewhere between 6.8 - 7.0 million people.
Remember how I made 6.8 million the low end of that range in the interest of caution because HHS had previously insisted that the August effectuated enrollment number was 7.3 million?
So, the big ACA data report of the day is the Kaiser Family Foundation's report about 2014 federal tax credit reconciliation--that is, they've issued a big report filled with number-crunchy goodness regarding how many people qualified for "Advanced Premium Tax Credits" last year (aka APTC, aka "Federal Tax Subsidies"), how much they overpaid, how much they underpaid and so on. Lots of good stuff here.
The major takeaway (judging from my Twitter feed, anyway) seems to be one particular point: About 50% of those who received the tax credits underestimated their incomes to the point that they have to pay back an average of $794 per household (important: That's per household, not per individual enrollee).
Now, the other major news here is that 45% of APTC recipients overestimated their incomes by a similar amount, meaning that they'll receive an additional little windfall of around $773 per household, which is awesome for those folks.
OK, it's important to stress that this may not mean anything. Perhaps Justice Kennedy was just in a crabby mood at the time, or perhaps it's an indication of his thinking at the moment but he'll change his mind between now and the June decision announcement (the way that Justice Roberts supposedly did a few years ago in the NFIB case (the one where they upheld the law but shot down mandatory Medicaid expansion). Or, perhaps Kennedy will side with the plaintiffs, but Justice Roberts will "play the savior" like he did 3 years ago.
