Hah...I knew I should've waited a couple more hours to send out the newsletter for the evening...

In the first week of open enrollment, 2,659 new customers signed up for private insurance plans and 8,945 people signed up for Medicaid through Access Health CT, the state’s health insurance exchange.

To reiterate: This is new enrollees only, not renewals:

The figures include people who had not previously had coverage through Access Health. The exchange did not release the number of people who currently have coverage through the exchange and signed up for 2015 coverage.

Oh, yeah, and I'm guessing that #ObamaDentata will mean more clarifications of this nature going forward:

Separately, 123 people signed up for dental coverage sold through the exchange.

Well, there's your transparancy improvement, folks...

Earlier today, in response to #ObamaDentata, Investor's Business Daily wrote an editorial in which they accused the HHS Dept. of flat-out "lying with statistics".

The first part of the piece lays out the basics: HHS claimed the number enrolled in QHPs was 7.3M in August & 7.1M in October, but it was revealed yesterday that the numbers were actually 6.97M in August and 6.7M in October...with the difference being 393,000 dental plans which were effectively double-counted:

This week, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell admitted that her agency had accidentally counted those who'd signed up for stand-alone dental benefits in its health insurance numbers, padding its latest enrollment data by nearly 400,000 — or 6%.

OK, the data is very limited (only 9 states...I left Illinois off because that only includes a single insurance company in the state), and it only runs through the first few days for some states (in fact, Hawaii is only part of the first day), but this at least gives me a starting point to work with.

Based, again, on extremely limited/partial numbers, it's looking like the national total in the first week may be twice as many as the entire first month last year. Amazing what a difference working websites can make...

Anyway, this chart is obviously going to jump around a lot as more numbers come in, and will likely increase dramatically as we approach December 15th...and then again as we approach February 15th. This is where it starts, though.

UPDATE 11/22/14: Only a few hours after I posted this, I received partial data from Kentucky & Connecticut which bumped my estimate for Week 1 even more, to at least 212,000 QHPs.

As of this afternoon, 23,457 total applications. 9,735 apps complete. 16,743 Marylanders enrolled in QHP + Medicaid. #GreatStartMaryland

— MD Health Connection (@MarylandConnect) November 21, 2014

OK, without knowing the QHP/Medicaid breakout, I have to temper my data-geek about the 16.7K total. Even so, that's pretty impressive.

For comparison, through October 3rd, Maryland's ratio was around 81,000 QHPs to 263,000 Medicaid additions...or about a 1:3 ratio.

except that about 96,000 of these were "one time" bulk transferees from an existing state-run program. If you take them out, the ratio is more like 81K / 167K, or about 1:2.

Until I get a hard number, I'll err on the side of caution and go with the 1:3 ratio, which would mean around 4,000 QHPs and 12,743 added to Medicaid.

OK, this is excellent. Minnesota has not only updated their official Enrollment Update page for the first time since #OE2 started, they've also clarified exactly when it will be updated (over the off-season it was scattershot, although they sometimes updated it daily:

Latest Enrollment Numbers

November 21, 2014

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 4,119
MinnesotaCare 1,215
Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 2,551
TOTAL 7,885

That's 2,551 QHPs in (less than) 7 days, or 364 per day so far.

For comparison, last year they averaged 242 per day (and remember, that included the massive spikes in December and late March/early April).

Plus, of course, we have the reset Medicare/MinnesotaCare numbers to plug in.

Note: It seems that the mainstream healthcare media has decided to go with the far more boring and obvious "#dentalgate". One of the fringe benefits of being an amateur blogger instead of a professional journalist is that I get to use vaguely-NSFW terminology if I feel like it. So, unless anyone has an objection, I'm sticking with "#ObamaDentata" for now.

You can't read the full story without logging into a subscription account (maybe I should consider that here after 2/15/15?), but here's the opening paragraph from Inside Health Policy (my emphasis):

HHS Acknowledges Error In Enrollment Numbers, Says 6.7M Effectuated

HHS on Thursday (Nov. 20) acknowledged that it overstated enrollment by nearly half a million people because it had included both dental and medical health plans in recent numbers, and affirmed that there were 6.7 million people enrolled in health plans as of Oct. 15, or 400,000 less than previously asserted.

Two things:

After yesterday's Obama Dentata* story broke, people asked whether I'm sticking with my official projections of 12 million QHP enrollments (total) and 10.6 million (paid). The answer is yes, and here's why:

  • First of all, yesterday I discovered that New York State has a much more aggressive target than I thought: 720,000 QHPs, which would be a whopping 94% increase over 2014 (I thought the 350K increase was QHPs + Medicaid combined, but Dan Goldberg of Capital New York specifically asked and was told nope, that's private QHPs only). It's a pretty tall order, but it's also a pretty confident/bold one. If they pull it off, that's 165,000 more people than I was projecting right there.

To recap: In the initial few days of 2015 #OE2, Massachusetts' actual QHP enrollments averaged about 52% of the total "determined eligible" number. The first official weekly report (with "selected plan" QHPs) will be released Monday, so for the moment I'm going with that ratio daily. With that in mind, it looks like MA may have broken the 10,000 milestone in just the first 5 days!

That's 19,957 "determined eligible" for QHPs. Assuming 52% have already selected plans, that's a total of over 10,300 to date.

Again, for comparison sake, last time around MA only 31,695 people were able to enroll. If my 10.3K figure proves accurate, that's 2,060 per day, compared with just 158/day for 2014...or 13x the rate.

Massachusetts is making up for last year's disaster in spades so far.

In addition, check out the confirmed Medicaid (MassHealth) tally: 16,292 people already.

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