As I reported Wednesday, brokers and small businesses using the D.C. Health Link exchange say the website is plagued with technical problems that have led to ongoing delays and frustrations. Among the problems: frozen screens, lost enrollment information, repeat error messages and other glitches. They also described ongoing delayed responses when they've reached out to the help resources for D.C. Health Link.
California's Obamacare exchange rejected a bid from the nation's largest health insurer to start selling coverage statewide next year.
The Covered California board adopted new rules Thursday that sharply limit where industry giant UnitedHealth Group Inc. could offer policies to individuals.
I haven't checked in on the Medicaid/CHIP enrollment situation in awhile, but with last week's revelation that California's Medicaid enrollment is a whopping 500,000 higher than previously thought, I probably should have done so earlier.
Well this one was unexpected: It's not a formal press release, but this story from the Hawaii Reporter--which actually has a pretty negative slant to it--is chock full of actual, current enrollment data points for Hawaii...and they're pretty good, relatively speaking.
None of the numbers are precise--they're all rounded off...but it's still a breath of fresh air from the Aloha state, and brings the number of states which haven't provided renewal data down from 3 to two (of course, the other two are California and New York, but still...)
...The Connector had about 1,000 people enrolled at this time last year. As of Thursday, that number had grown to 16,000.
...More than 365 small businesses, with 2,400 enrollees, have joined the Connector through the Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP, in part because of tax deductions available to them, Kissel said.
So, that brings their total up to 91,430 as of...um...well, "the last week alone" suggests 7 days, which would mean either 1/07 - 1/13 or 1/09 - 1/15 (which would leave a 2-day gap). Fortunately, they then followed up with this:
Two months of open enrollment down & more than 125,000 Kentuckians have newly enrolled 4 health coverage or renewed their plans thru #kynect
Over the past month or so, the "Healthy Michigan" program (our name for ACA Medicaid expansion) has been bouncing around between 490K - 505K...a bit higher one week, a bit lower the next as people move on and off of it.
However, given that the estimated maximum number of Michiganders eligible for the program is somewhere between 477K - 500K depending on your source, it's unlikely to go much higher than that. I'll keep a close eye on it for the next few weeks, but assuming it continues to jostle above/below the 500K mark, I'll consider Michigan to be effectively "tapped out" and will likely stop reporting it every week.
Last week, with autorenewals added into the mix, MNsure was sitting at 41,704 QHPs as of January 5th. They just posted another update running through last night (the date of the numbers is actually as of the night before, as made clear from the corresponding press releases):
Latest Enrollment Numbers: January 16, 2015
MNsure will release 2015 enrollment metrics weekly, and will present a more robust metrics summary to the MNsure Board of Directors at each regularly-scheduled board meeting. During weeks that MNsure is closed on Friday, the enrollment metrics update will be released earlier in the week.
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments Medical Assistance 38,405
MinnesotaCare 16,056
Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 43,461
TOTAL 97,922
I was burned a couple of weeks in a row by overestimating the actual private policy (QHP) selections to date in Massachusetts by around 5% or so. Last week I downshifted a bit (from 50% of eligibility determinations to 45%), resulting in an estimate of around 90,700 QHPs as of Tuesday.
Today the MA exchange released their weekly dashboard, with official QHP selections, and sure enough, I'm back on target: 93,262 QHP selections as of Wednesday the 14th, in addition to 178,912 Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollees.
As for the payment rate, on the surface it appears to be just 72% (67,265 out of 93,262). However, remember that the 93K figure includes 19,000 people who are enrolling for coverage starting in February. We know this because of this update from December 30th:
Of the 74,203 people who selected plans by the Tuesday deadline, 51,888 paid their first month’s premium by Friday.
I've updated The Graph again, bringing things up to the end of the day today (Friday, January 16). After a 3-week "quiet period" (made even quieter due to both Christmas and New Year's), things should have heated up again this past week as yesterday's February coverage deadline approached.
The first week after the January deadline, HC.gov saw a mere 96K QHP selections due to Christmas Eve/Day, and the following week wasn't much better at 103K. As expected, they picked up somewhat last week with 163K QHPs.
Presented without comment, because this story is so awesome there's not much I could say to make it any better:
Community Health pulls plans after meeting ACA goals
Community Health Alliance has pulled its health insurance plans off the federal marketplace because it hit its enrollment goals.
Knoxville-based Community Health Alliance, a nonprofit consumer operated and oriented insurance provider, or co-op, hit its enrollment goals in the first two months of open enrollment. It stopped offering plans on the exchange Jan. 15.
I have no idea whether there's a healthcare-specific awards ceremony or anything, but this seems to be the closest thing to it, so I'll take it: Dan Diamond of The Advisory Board Company has posted his "Best of 2014" list when it comes to healthcare journalism (is it one word or two?), and I'm honored to be mentioned among field luminaries such as Sarah Kliff, Alex Wayne, Nicholas Bagley, Margot Sanger-Katz and many others.
