This morning, in light of yesterday's major income verification outage at the IRS, HHS Sec. Burwell's comments from the other day, the massive snowstorm impact in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and DC, and a series of "waiting in line" extension period announcements by various state exchanges, I revised my QHP selection projections:
11.7 - 12.0 million by midnight tonight (EST)
12.2 - 12.5 million by 2/28 (that's the final "waiting in line" date given by New York)
Since I'm not a big fan of "ranges", I'm going to pin down my final call more closely:
11.9 million by midnight Eastern
12.4 - 12.5 million by 2/28, and for good measure...
9.5 million via Healthcare.Gov + 3.0 million via the state exchanges
Yesterday, Tami Luhby of CNN Money posted an article focusing on people who received a federal tax credit for part of all of 2014, but who will now have to pay some or all of it back to the IRS when they do their taxes because their household income ended up being higher than they had anticipated:
Janice Riddle got a nasty surprise when she filled out her tax return this year.
The Los Angeles resident had applied for Obamacare in late 2013, when she was unemployed. She qualified for a hefty subsidy of $470 a month, leaving her with a monthly premium of $1 for the cheapest plan available.
Riddle landed a job in early 2014 at a life insurance agency, but since her new employer didn't offer health benefits, she kept her Obamacare plan. However, she didn't update her income with the California exchange, which she acknowledges was her mistake.
Now, she has to pay back the entire subsidy, which is forcing her to dip into her savings.
Janice Riddle has to pay back her entire Obamacare subsidy.
Last spring, in light of the massive last-minute crush of enrollees, caused partially by the even more massive early technical issues at HC.gov and various state exchanges, the administration announced a 15-day "waiting in line" extension period which allowed anyone who had started the process as of midnight on March 31st, 2014 to have until April 15th to complete their enrollment checkout. It was a huge success, and resulted in an additional 900,000 people selecting a plan.
A few of the individual state exchanges even went beyond that, with either "full" or "waiting in line" extensions that bumped all the way out to the end of April or even May, in the case of Nevada...but at least there were specific dates given.
Yesterday, in response to a devastating 9-hour income verification system outage which prevented an unknown number of people from getting through the system, the HHS Dept. gave a vague announcement that:
...If you can’t submit your completed application, just save it. If you do, we'll make sure you can return later to finish and enroll for March 1 coverage.
I've stressed, over and over again, that my 12.5 million "by midnight February 15th" national QHP selection estimate assumed that there would be no further significant technical problems at Healthcare.Gov or the other exchanges.
As it happens, a couple of states (Washington in particular) have been having "significant technical problems" throughout the enrollment period after all, but nothing that would impact the overall numbers by more than perhaps 100K total...and HC.gov has been smooth sailing the entire way.
Consumers had difficulty submitting their applications for health insurance on Healthcare.gov just one day before this year's deadline, a Health Department official said Saturday.
"Some consumers have been unable to submit their application because their income is unable to be verified as a result of intermittent issues with external verification sources," the Department of Health and Human Services official said.
OK, CoveredCA had hit 1.314M as of Wednesday, and added about 46,000 more on Thursday & Friday (21K & 25K respectively) to reach 1.36 million as of last night.
That means they'd have to enroll a whopping 340K today and tomorrow, or 170K each day, to reach their 1.7M target. To reach my own just-lowered target of 1.6 million, they'd have to enroll 120K/day, which might be feasible.
Of course, with the extra 5 day "waiting in line" extension, they might be able to pull off one or the other.
As of last Monday, Colorado reported 128,000 enrollments in 2015. About three-fourths of those are returning customers , with about a fourth being new customers.
OK, so that's an increase of around 2,622. However, the "...as of last Monday" bit is confusing. To me, saying "last Monday" on a Friday refers to the prior Monday (ie, 2/02 in this case). However, that would suggest that CO enrolled over 1,300 per day for 2 days in a row. The state was only averaging 233/day over the prior couple of weeks, which means they'd have to have ramped up over 5.5x, which is possible (a few other states have pulled this off).
The DC exchange may be small, but every person counts. The only irritating thing about their reports is that they always refer to them as being cumulative since October 2013, instead of only counting those who have enrolled or renewed their policies since 11/15/14. I went through this a few weeks back and concluded that yes, the numbers below are accurate for 2015:
More Than 80,500 People Enrolled in Health Coverage Through DC Health Link
Friday, February 13, 2015
Enrollment
From October 1, 2013 to February 8, 2015, 80,578 people have enrolled in health insurance coverage through DC Health Link in private insurance or Medicaid:
20,358 people enrolled in a private qualified health plan,
44,457 people have been determined eligible for Medicaid, and
15,763 people enrolled through the DC Health Link small business marketplace (includes Congressional enrollment).
