Regular readers know that I've been a bit obsessed with hunting down the Mysterious World of OFF-exchange QHPs®...enrollees in fully ACA-compliant individual policies which aren't run through the exchanges (ie, no tax credits), but directly through the insurance companies themselves (Blue Cross, Aetna, whatever).
As I noted in my recent piece for healthinsurance.org, last year off-exchange QHPs ended up being a bit higher than as on-exchange: Around 8 million, give or take. However, this was just a rough estimate patched together from various data points, and even then it's likely that some number of those were the so-called "grandfathered" plans (which can continue indefinitely until the enrollee dies or cancels/stops payment) or the "transitional" (aka "grandmothered") plans, which are the ones which were supposed to be discontinued on 12/31/13, but were given up to a 3-year extension period depending on the state and insurance company.
A couple of weeks ago, Maryland blew past the HHS Dept's target for the state (88K QHPs) and hit 94K as of 1/22. I noted that they were on their way towards easily hitting my personal, higher target of 105K by 2/15.
In response, a few days ago I went through all 50 states (+DC) and adjusted my own projections, lowering them in 9 states while bumping them up in 26 others, including Maryland. I tacked another 10K onto MD to 115,000 QHP selections. (Note that I'm leaving my original projections in the actual spreadsheets to avoid confusion; the revisions are more just to confirm that I recognized where the trendlines would be and where my earlier logic fails were).
I've slightly modified the State-Level Goals graph, with color-coded lines at 80% and 90% of the target numbers. As always, the blue lines represent the percent of the official HHS/State Exchange target achieved; the green lines represent the percent of my target achieved. In every state (except New York), the green line is shorter because my target is higher than the HHS/Exchange goal.
Important: The other day I lowered my personal targets for 9 states and raised them for 26 others. However, I'm not changing these on my actual spreadsheet or any of my graphs; I'm curious to see how far off my original targets end up being.
Massachusetts continues to crank along. 1,632 QHP determinations x 45% selecting a plan means they should have added another 700 or so QHPs yesterday, for a total of around 116,700 to date.
This isn't a formal press release, but according to NBC Connecticut, Access Health CT has enrolled "more than 96,000" people into Qualified Health Plans (QHPs). The article ran yesterday, so presumably the number is current as of February 2nd at the latest:
Connecticut residents signing up for health insurance through Access Health CT must enroll by Feb. 15 or face a potential tax penalty from the federal government.
"We're on track to hit our [enrollment] goals," said Access Health CT's acting CEO, Jim Wadleigh.
The state's health care marketplace aims to sign up 100,000 private citizens during the current enrollment period. With less than two weeks left, more than 96,000 residents have signed up for qualifying health plans.
About 30,000 of them are new sign-ups, Wadleigh said, adding that all avenues for enrollment have been successful.
Huge enrollment news day--this is unexpected but welcome on top of the HC.gov report:
Press Release: Governor Cuomo Announces NY State of Health Hits Benchmark of Two Million Enrollees
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that the New York State of Health (NYSOH) Marketplace has enrolled more than two million New Yorkers in affordable health insurance coverage. This is the latest record enrollment for New York’s health exchange, and 89 percent of enrollees have reported that they had no coverage at the time they joined the Marketplace. New Yorkers who have enrolled in coverage through the Marketplace have overwhelmingly reported that they are satisfied with their health insurance (92 percent) and are using their coverage to access care (84 percent).
Latest enrollment breakdown:
· Total cumulative enrollment: 2,004,827 · Total Medicaid enrollment: 1,491,859
· Total private coverage: 512,968
· Total new 2015 enrollment: 429,972
· Total new 2015 Medicaid enrollment: 297,423
· Total new private coverage: 132,549
· Renewal rate in private coverage: 85 percent
It's one thing to know that the 10 million mark was broken over the weekend; it's something else to have it confirmed. Today's weekly HC.gov report brought the confirmed total up to 9.917 million nationally...but it was followed almost immediately by a surprise New York State of Health press release stating that NY has ramped up their QHP total to nearly 513,000*...a whopping 156K increase in just the past 17 days, which is rather astonishing.
*Note: it looks like NY may be including about 58K "Child Health Plus" enrollees in this number; if so, the actual QHP total would be about 454.5K, still impressive...and would also reduce the total below to about 10.016 million..but still over the 10 million mark. Until I can confirm this, however, I'm leaving the full 513K in the spreadsheet.
UPDATE 5/19pm: OK, just received confirmation from the NY State of Health that yes, today's 513K "private coverage" figure does indeed include Child Health Plus enrollees. They didn't have the exact number, but I'm fairly certain that it should be somewhere around 58-60K of the total.
As I noted last week, Rhode Island is doing exactly what every state exchange (as well as HC.gov) should be doing, assuming they have the technical capability to do so: They're updating their "enrollment" data weekly by purging those who didn't pay by the payment deadline, thus keeping their enrollment data as "clean" as possible. As a result, their "total" enrollment tally has actually dropped over the past 2 weeks as they cull unpaid enrollees from the official count. This is a good thing.
Unfortunately, since they're the only state doing this so far (both VT and MA are also tracking payment rates, but they're not lowering the "total" number accordingly), it also means that their "total" data is out of sync with everyone else's. This skews my national payment rate calculation a bit, but RI's numbers are so low anyway that it shouldn't have much of an impact one way or the other.
In any event, as of January 31st:
RENEWAL UPDATE
As of January 31, 2015, 78% of Year One customers have renewed (selected a plan) for 2015 (77% of renewing customers paid the first month’s premium).
I'm assuming that "nearly 10M" only runs through Friday the 30th (the weekly HHS reports always run through the previous Friday). I projected crossing the 10M path the following day (Saturday). The 7.5M and 2.4M figures (9.9M total) are obviously rounded off, so the total could be as high as 7.54M + 2.44M, or 9.98M total. Plus, of course, it's possible that they're missing a few days of data for some of the state exchanges. Tack on another 25K or so for Saturday and you're at 10M (at worst it looks like I was off by 1 day).
