I've had a couple of days to shake off the funk I was in after CoveredCA director Peter Lee stated that they would not be releasing any 2014 renewal data until as late as February. I'm still pretty grumpy about that.
Through January 12: 228,766 New Individuals Selected a Qualified Health Plan for 2015
Big deal, right? It updates the new enrollment figure a bit, but that's about it. But wait a minute...what was the CA QHP total just 1 day earlier (through January 11th)?
TODAY, January 15th, is the deadline for anyone who wants to enroll in a private insurance policy for coverage starting on February 1st in most states (or to switch to a different policy if you have one but want to make a change starting in February).
After that, of course, we'll have the big February 15th deadline (for March 1st coverage), which will also be a big deal because it'll be the last chance many (not all) uninsured people have to get coverage before the door slams closed until next fall.
Remember, the penalty in 2016 for not having health insurance in 2015 is considerably higher than it was for 2014: Instead of 1% of your taxable income (or $95/person in your household, whichever is higher), the fee this year is 2% of your income or $325 per person.
No official press release yet, but all of the numbers are here and are (thankfully) properly presented:
Following a flurry of activity leading up to a New Year’s Eve enrollment deadline for coverage on Jan. 1 — and also through the first 10 days of this month — 80 percent of first-year customers have signed up for a plan for this year, according to figures to be released on Thursday. Of those, 67 percent have followed through and paid their first monthly premium.
...Total enrollments for individuals now stands at 27,690, up from 25,288 just before the start of open enrollment in mid-November.
...“We were preparing for that with a very robust consumer outreach plan,” said spokeswoman Maria Tocco, adding, “I’m not sure we knew what to expect.”
...HealthSource RI reports that, as of Wednesday, 6,918 people who were not previously customers had been signed up for coverage. Wallack called that figure “great.”
...The new subscribers joined 20,772 returning individuals. Together, the two groups combined for an increase of 2,402 covered individuals, up slightly less than 1 percent from just before enrollment began.
The Access Health CT board of directors is holding a meeting this morning and promises to liveblog the latest developments, including updated enrollment numbers.
Connecticut hasn't updated their numbers since 12/15, when they announced 66K renewals and 19.4K new enrollees, so this should be somewhat interesting.
Remember that today (Jan. 15th) is the deadline for February 1st coverage
ENROLLMENT:
As of last Friday, "around" 90,000 customers (20% higher than last year)
1,500 - 2,000/day...on track to hit/exceed (combined)
last year: 100 - 120K total (includes Medicaid)
midnight tonight: should have over 500K in system (includes Medicaid)
dental: 1K any day now
OPERATIONS:
IRS form 1095 (tax credit form)
education/outreach/etc. programs already in gear
some people already asking questions, etc. re taxes
Earlier, I noted that now that the HHS Dept. has broken out the 6.75 million confirmed QHP selections by state, combined with the state-based exchange data that I also have, I'm finally able to get a real sense of how each individual state is doing so far. I noted that 18 states have already reached 100% of their respective 2015 QHP goal based on the official national HHS projection of 10.4 million QHP selections by February 15, and many others are close to that.
Of course, I shouldn't be too geeked about that, since the HHS projection was almost certainly lowballed somewhat to begin with. Therefore, I've also come up with my own projection of where I think things will stand by 2/15: Around 12.5 million QHPs total. None of the states/DC have reached my state-level targets yet, although 4 small states (Alaska, Delaware, DC and North Dakota) are over 90% of the way there.
Aside from the Mystery of the Missing Renewal Data® from California & New York, the biggest unknown between now and the end of 2015 Open Enrollment on February 15th is this: How big of a "final deadline surge" will there be?
My 12.5 million projection is based on the assumption that there's a mini-surge happening this week (the deadline for Feb. 1st coverage is tomorrow in most states), followed by another 3 week "quiet period" from around January 20th until around February 10th. During that 3 week period, I QHP enrollments should average roughly 40K per day (up from the 30K/day that should have been the average over the first "quiet period" we just came out of). That would bring the grand total to around 10.5 million around February 10th.
Now, the actual tally might be a bit higher or lower than that until that point, but I'm pretty confident it'll be in the neighborhood of 10.5M. The bigger question is what happens in the final 5 days of the Open Enrollment period, from 2/11 - 2/15 (which also happens to be Valentine's Day week, for whatever that's worth).
Yesterday, Peter Lee of Covered California held a phone press conference in which he gave out updated data for new QHP enrollments (bringing the total up to over 217K), but refused to give out any numbers whatsoever when it comes to renewals / re-enrollments of 2014 enrollees...whether these were done actively by the enrollee or automatically by the system.
Just now, I've learned that the other major state exchange missing data--New York State of Health--has apparently stated that not only are they not giving out their renewal/re-enrollment data either, they aren't even going to give out any new updates until February 1st:
With today's confirmation of 6.75 million QHPs via HC.gov (thru 1/09) and the almost-certain-to-be-close 90K figure from Massachusetts (through yesterday), the confirmed (or virtually confirmed) QHP total nationally is now up to over 7.82 million. However, my estimate is now up to 9.34 million, or around 1.52 million higher.
I've done this before, but this seems like a good point to again review where the gap between the numbers is:
OK. The latest weekly snapshot released by the HHS Dept. an hour or so ago was about 25,000 enrollees higher than I figured, which is nice. However, the real news was that they included a state-level breakout of all 37 states, which is awesome!
I've plugged all 37 states into the spreadsheet, broken into 2 numbers: Total active renewals (ie, those who actively renewed or switched plans by the 12/15 deadline) and total autorenewals + new enrollments (unfortunately, I can't really break these out; I tried, but there are overlaps between the 12/15 ASPE report and the 12/19 weekly snapshot). In addition, the autorenewals are a "lump sum" instead of being broken out by state; I attempted to estimate based on the percent-of-total but came up with some states having negative figures, so obviously there are too many variables. That is, just because a particular state has, say, 2% of the active renewals doesn't mean they had 2% of the auto renewals, and so on.
Anyway, after plugging everything into the spreadsheet--along with the state-based exchange data--I can now see just where the HC.gov QHPs are...and the results are impressive and interesting in several ways:
At least 18 states (well, 17 + DC) have achieved 100% or more of the HHS's (admittedly lowballed) target (or in some cases, the state administration's publicly-stated target) for 2015 already. Note that this generally assumes 30% higher than last year's open enrollment total (ie, 10.4M nationally = 30% more than 8M):
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, DC, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming
I say "at least" 18 because we still have zero renewal/re-enrollment data from California, New York or Hawaii, and even the new enrollee data is still as much as a month out of date in a few states.
Massachusetts, as always, is a special case. 30% higher than last spring would only be around 42,000; they're up well over 2x that already. However, a more realistic goal for them would be 175K or more given the unique nature of their situation.
Another likely 1,100 QHPs yesterday (out of 2,540 QHP eligibility determinations) means that Massachusett's QHP selection total should be up to around 90,700 by now. Medicaid has broken the 175K mark:
