As CoveredCA has noted before, they have no plans on posting renewed policy enrollments until January, but this at least gives data on the new additions:
COVERED CALIFORNIA AND DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH CARE SERVICES RELEASE EARLY RESULTS FOR FIRST MONTH OF OPEN ENROLLMENT THROUGH HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGE
Demand for Coverage Continues to Be Strong, with Applications Submitted for More Than 592,000 People Through Dec. 15
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — More than 592,000 people sought coverage and were determined eligible for private health insurance and eligible or likely eligible for Medi-Cal in the first month of open enrollment, Covered California and the California Department of Health Care Services announced Wednesday.
The consumers, who applied for coverage through Covered California since open enrollment began on Nov. 15, include 157,361 eligibility determinations and an additional 144,178 plan selections for private coverage, as well as 216,423 enrollments into Medi-Cal coverage and 74,965 who are likely eligible for Medi-Cal. So far in 2014, Medi-Cal has enrolled more than 2.2 million consumers.
After all the craziness of the past day or two, I figured this would be a good time for a reality check. I've taken the 2014 Open Enrollment Period Graph, compressed it so that the time period and scale match the 2015 Period (ie, 3 months instead of 6.5) and have overlaid it on top of the 2015 Graph to see how they compare. The comparison is pretty striking.
(NOTE: I've modified this version to make the adjusted timeframes less confusing, and clicking below will now load the full-size version in a new window):
Wow! This was unexpected; while several other states have provided enrollment updates today, and some have broken out (or at least included) both new enrollments as well as manual renewals/re-enrollments, Kentucky is the first one to include automatic renewals as well!
Webb is one of 101,114 Kentuckians who have newly enrolled or re-enrolled in Obamacare health plans during the first 30 days of open enrollment through the state's health insurance exchange, kynect. State numbers released late Tuesday afternoon show that 16,139 residents met eligibility requirements for Medicaid, 9,215 newly enrolled in qualified health plans and 75,760 auto-renewed last year's private kynect health plans since re-enrollment began Nov. 15.
This is important for a couple of reasons: First, it's the first enrollment update of any sort we've heard from Idaho (which was, until tonight, the only exchange I didn't have any info on). Secondly, it's important because Idaho is the only state which moved off of Healthcare.Gov onto their own exchange. Finally, the number is absolutely fantastic, especially considering that it doesn't include Monday:
BOISE, Idaho – During the first month of open enrollment, Your Health Idaho processed 74,689 enrollments, which includes new applicants and those renewing coverage for 2015. The numbers released by Your Health Idaho at its Tuesday board meeting include enrollments processed from November 15 through December 14.
For comparison, last year Idaho enrolled 76,000 people for the entire enrollment period.
That's right: They managed to essentially equal 6 1/2 months worth of private policy enrollments in just 1 month...and that doesn't include the surge from yesterday (or for the following 5 days, since ID's deadline isn't until the 20th).
On the one hand, I'm a bit pouty today because I was off by about 6% on my HC.gov estimate through the 4th week. On the other hand, this is good news because it means that the actual enrollment total is 126K higher than I thought...and that's just via Healthcare.Gov! Of course, it's possible that the state exchanges will be a bit lower than I thought which might cancel this out, but assuming the 75/25 ratio is accurate, it should mean that instead of the 3.1 million national total I had estimated for 12/12, it should be closer to 3.3 million!
Anyway, here's the hard numbers from HC.gov through December 12th:
The CMS Dept. is holding a conference call with reporters right now. I'll be liveblogging the call and posting updates as quickly as I can for any useful info. It should focus much on the enrollment numbers, of course, but also how well the HC.gov servers held up under yesterday's strain, and I'd expect a lot of discussion of the "autorenewal" issue--how many, how it'll be handled and so forth.
Participants: Lori Lodes, Kevin Counihan & Andy Slavitt
3:04pm: Call hasn't started yet, but HHS just releaced their 4th week enrollment data for HC.gov (thru 12/12)...and it's actually 5.4% higher than I thought! (thanks to Bob Herman for the tip!)
My estimate: 2.32 million
Actual: 2,446,562
still 52% renewals / 48% new
Call starting:
first 8 hours: 20K applications
last 3 days: more than 3 million unique site visitors
HUGE news day, of course. In addition to HC.gov overperforming my estimate by 6% (2.46M as of 12/12 instead of 2.32M), Maryland and Massachusetts are out with their latest numbers.
MA still isn't including an actual QHP selection update, but it should be roughly 56,600 based on the "QHP eligibility determinations" total of 103,591.
In addition, they're about to break 90K even added to Medicaid:
Hmmm...this is different; I'm pretty sure this is the first time that I've been quoted in a formal enrollment data press release...
MARYLAND HEALTH BENEFIT EXCHANGE BOARD CELEBRATES PROGRESS OF OPEN ENROLLMENT
Exchange enrolls more than 100,000 at one month mark
BALTIMORE (Dec. 16, 2014) — The Board of Directors of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange (MHBE) today celebrated the progress of the Maryland Health Connection one month into its open enrollment. More than 100,000 Marylanders have signed up for 2015 health coverage.
Maryland Health Connection has enrolled 105,902 people — including 61,031 in Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) and 41,871 in Medicaid. By comparison, during the first open enrollment a year ago, 1,278 Marylanders enrolled in private QHPs through the marketplace during its first 30 days.
A rebuilt website that enables consumers to “browse” plans without needing to create personal accounts, a much larger schedule of enrollment fairs across the state than a year ago and additional “storefront” spaces where Marylanders can get assistance enrolling in person have helped propel the improved results. The changes have been noted in the media, including:
Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 487,190
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)
*Statistics as of December 15, 2014
*Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.
In all seriousness, obviously that 477K eligibility figure could be off; I've heard other estimates as high as 500,000, for instance.
The point is that the Medicaid expansion well in Michigan, along with many other states, is already running dry less than a year into the program (and in Michigan's case, less than 9 months into the program).
As you can see on The Graph, I'm also assuming roughly an 88% payment rate (ie, how many of those 12.5M I expect to pay for their first month's premium), which should be roughly 11.0 million even.
However, there's one number missing, which I left off in the interest of avoiding confusion: How many I expect to still be enrolled by the end of 2015. This is pretty simple, though: Around 10.5 million. How do I arrive at that number? Well, this year the net attrition rate resulted in around 6.7 million people still being enrolled nationally as of mid-October. That's around 84% of the 8.0 million "total" enrollment figure as of last April. In other words, out of 8 million people, about 12% never paid and another 4% gradually dropped off the exchanges by October.
Assuming a similar pattern next year, 84% of 12.5 million is 10.5 million who should still be enrolled via ACA exchanges as of next October.
