Washington Healthplanfinder Reminds Residents to Get Enrolled by 5 p.m. Today
Renewing Customers Must Also Take Action to Avoid a Gap in Coverage
OLYMPIA, Wash. – The Washington Health Benefit Exchange is reminding residents today to select and pay for a Qualified Health Plan through www.wahealthplanfinder.org by 5 p.m. for coverage that begins on Jan. 1, 2015. As of yesterday, more than 92,000 residents have enrolled for coverage that starts in 2015, with 22,710 of those customers enrolling for the first time in a Qualified Health Plan.
Interest surrounding the Dec. 23 deadline has been strong with approximately 30,000 calls to the Customer Support Center since Friday, Dec. 19. Nearly 7,000 customers enrolled in a Qualified Health Plan from Friday to Sunday alone.
Remember last week when I noted that the "Healthy Michigan" program (MI's implementation of ACA Medicaid expansion) had reached 487,000 people, which was actually 2% more than the official estimate of how many Michiganders are even eligible for the program?
I made sure to note that this was just an estimate, after all, and that some other estimates put the number as high as 500,000 even.
Well, guess what?
Healthy Michigan Plan Enrollment Statistics
Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 501,860
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)
*Statistics as of December 22, 2014
*Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.
Yup. Even using the higher number, Michigan has still broken through it in less than 9 months. And if you go by the 477K estimate, that means my state has managed to enroll 5.2% more than that.
Today is the final day for Massachusetts residents to enroll in a private healthcare plan if they want coverage to start on January 1st. As of last night, they had a total of 248,711 eligibility determinations, of which 131,732 are for private QHP policies (the other 117K have already been enrolled in Medicaid, aka "MassHealth", which is impressive in and of itself).
So, how many of those nearly 132K people have actually selected a plan? Well, since open enrollment started on 11/15, anywhere between 45-55% of total QHP determinations as of that day have also selected a plan. If that was the case here, I'd say that the number is around 50%, or around 66,000, which would be an impressive 4,600 spike over yesterday's confirmed 64.1K.
UPDATE: OK, I've received the official total: As of midnight last night, 67,759 people had selected a policy, or 51.4%. I've also confirmed that about 47% had paid their first premium already...32,000 people, or more than the total enrollees as of last April.
This morning the HHS Dept. announced that QHP policy selections through 12/19 via the federal ACA exchange totalled 6.4 million people.
They also broke this number out (roughly) as being around 1.70 million manual renewals, 2.78 million automatic renewals and 1.92 million new additions.
I had estimated roughly 3.52 million not including autorenewals through the 12/15 deadline; the actual number looks like it was roughly 3.40 million (plus another 220K over the next few days). That means I was over by about 3.5% on that number.
Yet I underestimated by around 9% for the total. How could this be? Because I vastly underestimated the number of automatic renewals which would be put through.
I assumed around 6.1 million total renewals (manual + automatic). The total from HC.gov is around 4.48 million, leaving around 1.62 million renewals (again, manual plus automatic) from the other 14 state exchanges.
6.4 million via Healthcare.Gov (37 states) + more than a million via the other 13 states (+DC) = 7,438,851 confirmed to date.
Note that this is only through 12/19 for most states, and that the January enrollment deadline still hasn't passed for 6 states (the deadline for MA & WA is today; for RI, VT, MN and HI it's not until New Year's Eve).
I'm still pouring over the numbers from the state exchanges (not a typo...I actually spilled hot chocolate near my keyboard...), but in terms of renewals, here's what it looks like so far (remember, there were around 6.7 million potential renewals to start with):
Today should be a big day in ACA enrollment news. It's the deadline for January enrollment in 2 more states (Massachusetts and Washington State). More to the point, the HHS Dept. is expected to release their 5th weekly "snapshot" report. This should be a big one, since it runs through 12/19, meaning it includes the big December 15th deadline which impacted all 37 states being run through HC.gov this year.
I don't know whether they'll just give the weekly numbers (through Friday the 19th) or if they'll also give a 12/15 number (remember, either one would be for HC.gov only, not including the 14 state-based exchanges).
I also don't know how they plan on reporting the millions of autorenewals which should have kicked in on Tuesday the 16th. If the snapshot runs through the 19th, they may be included in the "snapshot" total. Then again, they may be listed separately, or not at all. For all I know, some will be included but not others (it's possible that they've only processed a portion of them).
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhode Island's health insurance exchange is extending the deadline for residents hoping to sign up for coverage beginning on Jan. 1.
HealthSource RI announced on Monday that people who can't meet the original Tuesday deadline will now have until Dec. 31 to enroll. They must also pay the first month's premium by Jan. 15.
There's a catch, however:
HealthSource officials caution, however, that customers who enroll after Dec. 23 may not receive their insurance cards or have active coverage on the first of the year. That could mean having to pay upfront for any care they receive during the gap and be reimbursed by their insurer after submitting receipts.
Individuals can choose health plans and enroll for coverage through the HealthSource website. They can also call or visit walk-in centers in Providence or Warwick between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.
That makes 4 states pushing things out until New Year's Eve: Vermont, Minnesota, Hawaii and now Rhode Island.
When we last checked in on New York State, they had added a total of 195,000 new people since November 15th in addition to those already enrolled for 2014. This broke out to around 126.6K added to Medicaid and 68.4K set up for 2015 private policies.
NY's enrollment deadline for January QHP coverage ended on Saturday, and they've just come out with an updated total. Again, this does not include renewals of current enrollees:
NY up to 225,244, enrollment, not counting renewals @charles_gaba hopefully medicaid /qhp breakdown soon
Again, no breakout yet; that usually shows up within an hour or so of the initial total, based on Dan Goldberg's past scoops. Assuming it's roughly a 65/35 split like the prior total was, that should mean roughly 79,000 private policies and 146,000 Medicaid/CHIP.
I'll update this with more details as they come out...
On Friday I discovered that my estimate of roughly 60% of Massachusetts "determined eligible for QHPs" actually selecting a plan was way too high; the actual ratio was closer to 48% overall, meaning that my prior estimate of about 62K QHP selections was too high; the actual number was 53,490 as of Thursday the 18th, which is still excellent, just not as great as I thought it was.
Today I received confirmation directly from the exchange that total enrollments (ie, selected plans) are up to 61,470 as of this morning, which means that the ratio is indeed starting to move up, just later and not as quickly as I had thought (61,470 / 124,403 QHP determinations is just shy of 50%).
