Back on October 1st, Your Health Idaho posted the following blog entry launching their "window shopping" tool for 2015 private policies, which also included very specific deadlines for both selecting a plan as well as paying the first premium for January 1st coverage:
BOISE, Idaho – As the December 23 deadline for health coverage to begin on January 1 is days away, Your Health Idaho and insurance companies selling plans on Your Health Idaho are taking several steps to provide consumers with a smooth transition to coverage.
Yup, my wife and I went ahead and manually renewed our own private healthcare policy via HC.gov this morning here in the Wolverine State. We had already used the window shopping/browsing feature ("See Plans & Prices") and determined thatin our case, sticking with the same plan through the same company made the most sense for us.
Now, here's where things get interesting: For 2014 we qualified for a small tax credit. For 2015, while our projected taxable income is expected to be pretty much identical to what we had projected a year earlier, our tax credit went up by $61 per month.
The policy itself also did go up by $93/month, but due to our tax credit also increasing, our net cost ends up being just $32/month more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled about having to pay $384/year more on top of what's already a pretty steep rate, but the point is that for some people, their tax credits are increasing next year (ie, meaning a lower net premium increase than the official rate increase would indicate).
Special thanks to Nick Budnick for providing a direct link to Oregon's ACA exchange enrollment update page, which, as a bonus, also tracks off-exchange QHPs as well (which I really wish every state would include as a separate line item):
The Insurance Division will collect enrollment information from carriers each week throughout 2015 open enrollment. Updated numbers will be posted each week on this web page.
Members enrolled, Nov. 15-Dec. 7 On Healthcare.gov 26,933
Outside of Healthcare.gov 17,923
Total 44,856
About the data: Enrolled means a person has selected a plan. Consumers must pay the first month's premium for their coverage to become effective. These numbers do not identify whether the first month's premium has been paid. These numbers do not include Oregonians enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid).
These preliminary numbers are subject to change week to week based on people changing or canceling plans or having a change in status such as a new job or marriage.
Things weren't looking great eight months ago for Dr. Peter Beilenson and Evergreen Health Co-op, the insurance company he created from scratch.
The brand-new insurance company had been counting on Maryland's health exchange to bring in its first members. But the online marketplace was a nightmare for people trying to sign up. With higher prices and less name recognition than competitors like CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Evergreen ended the exchange's open enrollment period with just 400 members.
...Fast-forward to today and business is looking up for Evergreen. The companyshifted focus to small business groupsonce it realized it couldn't rely on the exchange alone. Evergreen lowered its premium prices for 2015 individual plans and is locking in the rates on both its individual and small group plans for two years. About 800 people have signed up for Evergreen health plans through the exchange since it opened in mid-November.
Two of the most heavily Republican states, Utah and Wyoming, appear to be moving closer to an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Other GOP-dominated states, like Indiana and Tennessee, are also looking more closely at it, despite the hostility of their party’s leaders toward Obamacare.
...Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming, where Republicans hold 78 of 90 seats in the legislature, acknowledged his opposition to Obamacare but said the statehad to be realistic by embracing Medicaid expansion in one form or another. “I don’t think we can say to those people in Wyoming who are working [and] who cannot get insurance that we’re not going to do anything,” he said.
...While the odds for expansion in Wyoming remain uncertain, Utah seems likely to move in the coming months. There, Gov. Gary Herbert made the case on moral grounds — as a duty to help people he described as “our neighbors, our friends and our family members.”
This is an excellent overview of how healthcare pundits, politicos, reporters and industry folks are keeping a very close eye on the ACA exchanges this weekend, as the December 15th deadline for January coverage approaches (well, for most states, that is; 6 states now have deadlines later than the 15th). It's well worth a read, as it goes into the whole "manual renewal" vs. "autorenewal" issue and a whole mess of other stuff.
However, towards the end are two additional data points:
CMS officials, including Marketplace CEO Kevin Counihan have been reassuring about auto-enrollment, said Martin Hickey, CEO of New Mexico’s co-op health plan. “It’s a stressor, but I haven’t seen him biting his fingernails,” Hickey said of Counihan. “But you never know.” His own health plan has had 3,ooo people sign up as of Dec. 10 through HealthCare.gov and the pace is picking up.
The latest official report from the MD exchange...
Enrollment Report (Thru Dec. 11, 2014)
More than 80,000 Marylanders have enrolled in advance of Dec. 18 deadline for full 2015 health coverage
Overview
As of Dec. 11, a total of 80,354 Marylanders have enrolled in quality, affordable health coverage for calendar year 2015 since the 90-day open enrollment period began Nov. 15.
This includes 45,014 individuals enrolled in private Qualified Health Plans and 35,340 individuals enrolled in Medicaid. Marylanders must enroll or renew their plans by Dec. 18 for insurance that starts New Year’s Day and, if they qualify, to receive an Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) beginning then. Open enrollment for 2015 ends Feb. 15.
Again, for comparison: Last year, Maryland scored a grand total of 67,757 QHP enrollments through the April 19th open enrollment cut-off (6 1/2 months).
This year, they've already reached 2/3 of that in under 4 weeks.
Hmmmmm...MA has switched their weekly reports from Mondays to Fridays, which is fine...except that until now the weekly versions also included actual hard "QHP plans selected" data.
This one...doesn't. It includes all the other weekly stuff but not the actual plans selected (aka "total enrollments" by my lingo). As a result, I'll still have to do an estimate based on the Eligibility Determinations...which in this case is a total of 83,988.
Assuming that the % of QHP determinations which have already led to actual plan selections is up to around 60% per day by now (up from around 52% a week or so ago), that should mean roughly 44,800 QHP selections to date. To be cautious, however, i'll knock it down to an even 44K for now.
And, again, Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollments are already up to 72,175 people.
