I'm not sure what to make of this. "Over a million people enrolled" it says. The embedded image specifically refers to 2015 coverage (and of course that's what they're pushing hard right now). Yet the most recent HHS Dept. weekly "snapshot" report has the number of plan selections as 2,446,562.
So, what does "over a million" refer to? Well, it could be a couple of things. It's most likely referring to the 48% of those who are new enrollees (around 1.17 million)...but if that was the case, it would make more sense to me to include the confirmed renewals for 2015 as well and say "more than 2.4 million enrolled."
At least 1.1 million people have signed up for healthcare through ObamaCare outside of the federal marketplace, according to a review of state data by The Hill.
That tally is on top of the 2.5 million people who signed up for coverage in the 37 states using the federal exchange, putting ObamaCare on track to outpace its goal for 2015.
I have a confirmed total of just over 3.5 million private policy enrollments via the various exchanges (federal + state) to date, so when I read the first sentences, it made me think "Ah ha! They've been reading ACASignups.net and also managed to find at least another 100K policy enrollments that I've missed! I was intrigued. But then...
Out of the 13 states that don’t use the federal exchange, 11 have reported data since Dec. 17 — a total of 1,142,124 sign-ups. Rhode Island and Idaho have not yet reported numbers.
A quick reminder: If you live in Idaho or New York, today is the deadline to enroll in a private healthcare policy if you want coverage starting on January 1st, 2015.
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. 14
On Healthcare.gov 40,581
Outside of Healthcare.gov 26,799
Total 67,380
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).
This updated from Oregon doesn't increase the total on the spreadsheet or graph, because it's already included in the HC.gov reports, but it's important for other reasons, including:
When I made my original projection of 12.0 million QHP selections by 2/15/15, I assumed that roughly 6.1 million of the 6.7 million current 2014 enrollees would re-up via one of three methods:
Actively logging into their existing account and renewing their current policy/switching to a different one
Actively creating a new account (in states like MA, MD, OR & NV) and enrolling the same/a different policy for 2015
Taking no action whatsoever and being automatically re-enrolled in their current account (or one nearly identical if the current one is no longer available).
In other words, I was operating on the assumption that roughly 6.1 million (91%) of current enrollees would stay on board one way or another, plus another 5.9 million new folks signing up for the first time.
OK, it looks like my theory about MA's "QHPs as % of Determinations" theory was wrong; I assumed that it would have started increasing from 50% over the past week, intstead it dropped to about 48% (or held steady at 52% if you include the "plans in cart" which neither I nor the MA exchange is doing anyway).
Therefore, the bad news is that the official total is around 8,300 fewer than I thought: 53,490 thorugh yesterday. The good news is that this is still an excellent number, and there's still tens of thousands of people who've started the process who have until next Tuesday to wrap it up.
In addition, remember my snark from 11/16 about "ONLY 3.5% HAVE PAID!!"? Well, guess what: That percentage is up to 34%, and they still have 5 days to pay (I presume they're dealing with a flood of payments at the moment).
The Medicaid tally holds at 98,530 since it doesn't include yesterday.
More Than 136,000 Marylanders Have Enrolled for Jan. 1 Coverage in State’s Health Insurance Marketplace
December 19th, 2014
ANNAPOLIS, MD – Governor O’Malley announced today that Maryland Health Connection, the state-based health insurance marketplace for individuals, families and small businesses, enrolled 136,685 individuals from the start of open enrollment onNov. 15 to last night’s deadline for coverage that begins Jan. 1.
That total includes 79,987 people signed up for private Qualified Health Plans (QHPs). More than three-quarters of QHP enrollees, or 61,448, are eligible for an Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) — upfront financial assistance to reduce their monthly insurance premiums. An additional 56,698 have enrolled in Medicaid since Nov. 15 through Maryland Health Connection. Open enrollment continues through Feb. 15, 2015.
MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31
MNsure sent this bulletin at 12/19/2014 11:34 AM CST
December 19, 2014
MNSURE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31
Decision follows transfer of enrollment information to insurance carriers and aligns enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage
ST. PAUL, Minn.—In an effort to provide more time for Minnesotans who qualify for financial help available only through MNsure, the organization today announced it would extend the enrollment deadline to December 31 for January 1 coverage.
Minnesotans must now enroll in coverage through MNsure by noon on Wednesday, December 31, to have their coverage effective on January 1, 2015. The change comes at a time of high interest in MNsure and as many health insurance companies recently extended their own enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage.
Margot Sanger-Katz has a fascinating story today about the "woodworker" effect in non-expansion states. I've written about woodworkers many times before; the short version is, these are people who were already eligible for Medicaid even before/without the ACA expansion provisions, but who never actually enrolled in the program for any number of reasons. Their reasons could be personal (embarrassment/shame over taking a "handout"), it could be because they didn't know that they were eligible (the rules vary from state to state), it could be because the enrollment process is too confusing (again, not an easy process in some states).
Submitted by Charles Gaba on Thu, 12/18/2014 - 10:04pm
NOTE: I've decided to start posting my "Nightly Update" newsletters here on the site itself, since they sometimes are basically full posts themselves. Case in point...
As I noted this morning, between a serious backlog with my website clients (that's right, this isn't supposed to be my day job) and the fact that just about all of the state exchanges are updated to within the past few days, it was pretty light posting today. There were a few notable developments, however:
MA's deadline for January coverage isn't until Tuesday the 23rd, so they've been holding pretty steady, although the numbers are definitely moving up gradually (note that they did have a mini-spike on Monday as well). Speaking of January enrollment deadlines...
Maryland's Deadline is Tonight at Midnight!
I didn't post anything about this beyond highlighting MD on the home page of the site, but it's worth noting, since I'm assuming they'll have a Big Press Release tomorrow with their total numbers.
For comparison, they reported 61K QHPs (and 41.9K Medicaid additions) as of 12/15. To reach the HHS's "30% over 2014" target, they'll have to hit 88K by February 15th, or 101K to reach my own "50% over 2014" target for Maryland, so they're doing very well so far.
