The Republican Chair of the House Ways & Means Committee, Paul Ryan (who was also Mitt "Grandfather of Obamacare" Romney's running mate just 2 1/2 years ago, you might recall), has made it official:
(Bloomberg) -- House Republicans won’t agree to fix Obamacare if the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the law bars health-insurance subsidies for millions of people, said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.
Republicans are developing a “contingency plan” to address the states whose residents would lose subsidies while lawmakers work on a full replacement for the Affordable Care Act, Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, told reporters Friday in Washington.
The enrollment data from Hawaii has been sporatic and a bit squirrelly, with the few numbers being thrown around sometimes including the cumulative plan selections including 2014 enrollees whether they renewed for 2015 or not. When I posted my last Hawaii update, I was suspicious (at 16.1K, it was nearly twice last year's tally), but the article seemed pretty confident about the numbers, so I went with it.
An hour ago I wrote about the WA HealthplanFinder re-launching a special Tax Season enrollment period which effectively just extends the enrollment period out by an extra 2 months. However, the press release wasn't posted openly on their site.
MNsure Announces Special Enrollment Period for Consumers "In Line" to Enroll at Midnight February 15
Special Enrollment Period planned to ensure all Minnesotans have the ability to get covered
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Today MNsure announced a plan to ensure all Minnesotans “in line” have the ability to obtain affordable, comprehensive coverage. The Special Enrollment Period will make certain that Minnesotans who were “in line” to enroll—those who began the enrollment process but experienced difficulty, preventing enrollment in time to beat the February 15 deadline—will have their enrollments processed during a special enrollment period.
“In line” is defined as anyone who took any of the following steps with the MNsure system:
This is the first year residents who are filing their 2014 federal taxes may incur a penalty through the IRS on their tax return if they failed to have health insurance for more than three consecutive months in 2014. Given that some residents may become aware of the penalty for the first time this year, Washington Healthplanfinder will open a Special Enrollment Period for these individuals so they can get coverage and avoid the penalty for not having coverage in 2015. These individuals as well as those who were unable to meet the Feb. 15 deadline can apply for the Spring 2015 Special Enrollment Period.
As I noted last night, I've had to restructure my national projections due to the IRS verification issue on Saturday, the massive snowstorms in the northeast and other odds & ends which have led practically every state (except for HI, KY, MN & VT) to announce some sort of enrollment extension period. A few are "full" extensions (ie, you don't have to have already started the process yet); most are "waiting in line" extensions (you have to have already started your application as of midnight Sunday).
The cut-off dates also vary widely, from as soon as Friday the 20th (California) to as late as Saturday the 28th (Maryland & New York). A few haven't given any hard date, although the 28th is the most practical cut-off point (at least for coverage to start the next day, that is).
Anyway, here's my revised estimates of how the final week of the official Open Enrollment Period played out...and how I expect the "overtime" period to look:
Yesterday I poked fun at many of the ACA exchanges for issuing vaguely-worded, non-specific statements about "making sure that everyone who tried" to enroll by midnight would be assisted, without any particular deadlines being given or other specifics.
Since then, most of the exchanges which hadn't done so already have clarified the extension policies--hard end dates, what the procedure is and so on.
And then there's Your Health Idaho, which features this on their home page:
OK, the HHS/CMS Dept. has issued the following...the cut-off date for the "overtime" period is 1 week (Sunday, February 22):
“We are pleased that the vast majority of consumers were able to apply and pick a plan through HealthCare.gov or its call center without a problem. For those consumers who were unable to complete their enrollment because of longer than normal wait times at the call center in the last three days or because of a technical issue such as being unable to submit an application because their income could not be verified, we will provide them with a time-limited special enrollment period for March 1 coverage."
Addition background information from CMS:
This special enrollment period (SEP) will start on February 16, 2015, and end on February 22, 2015.
Enrollments completed during the SEP will have an effective date of March 1, 2015, to align with the coverage effective date the consumer would have received had they been able to complete the enrollment process by February 15, 2015.
Considering that not one, not two, but forty-six states have announced some sort of open enrollment extension period, and considering that yesterday's IRS tax verification outage (and other technical issues in Washington State) may have caused the delay of a whopping half a million QHP selections or more, it behooves me to bite the bullet and modify The Graph to accomodate the new situation.
The main thing to notice is that although I've made some significant adjustments to my individual state projections, my overall final projections haven't really changed at all (aside from nudging the HC.gov/State Exchange split from 9.4M/3.1M to 9.5M/3.0M). I'm still calling for around 12.5 million QHP selections in the end (possibly a bit less than that); I've just bumped out the target date from 2/15 to 2/28.
Just a few hours ago, Access Health CT issued what seemed to be a fairly solid, hard-line statement about midnight tonight being their open enrollment deadline.
Apparently the moves made by HC.gov, CO, NY, CA, MA, WA & MD (just moments earlier) got to Connecticut...
