For each of the first two weeks, HC.gov has reported that the total QHP enrollments to data are split roughly evenly between new enrollees and renewals, which I find rather interesting; I was figuring that the early days would skew more heavily towards renewals, perhaps by a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio.
Part of this could simply be different states cancelling each other out--after all, all enrollees in both Nevada and Oregon, which were shifted over to HC.gov this year, are being categorized as "new" since the enrollees had to start over again; between the two states, that's up to around 110,000 current enrollees who would be listed as "new" even if they were re-enrolling...so it's possible that there are other states with a higher "renewal" ratio which is cancelling those two out.
Oh for the love of...I spent a solid year screaming at HealthCare.Gov to start releasing their data on a regular basis; they finally did so, and now Covered California has decided to go radio silent instead. This is, quite simply, unacceptable.
In California, however, officials at Covered California, the Obamacare exchange here,haven't provided updates since Nov. 20, when they released data for the first four days of the new open enrollment session.
Covered California released those preliminary figures Nov. 20, when Executive Director Peter Lee revealed that 11,357 people signed up for private health plan coverage between the Nov. 15 beginning of this year's open enrollment period and Nov. 18.
...Since Nov. 20, there have been no new updates, and officials don't expect to announce new figures until mid- to late December, at the earliest, and possibly not until January.
I actually feel rather stupid about not looking into this earlier, but now's as good a time as any: In my latest post over at healthinsurance.org, I go over the various deadlines for both enrolling and making initial premium payments for January 1st, 2015 exchange policy coverage (and how this factor might impact my QHP projections). Take a look!
OK, this particular experiment is specifically for HealthCare.Gov QHP enrollments only, not the national total including the state exchanges. I'm trying to see just how much of a correlation there is between the Massachusetts exchange (the only state providing daily enrollment updates) and HealthCare.Gov. Obviously there are a lot of differences between the two beyond scale, but so far they've tracked pretty closely on a number of criteria, so I want to see if that holds true on actual enrollments as well.
So, this is actually a twofold projection:
On Monday, I suspect the MA Health Connector will announce roughly 33,300 QHP selections as of the end of Friday, December 5th.
Then, on Wednesday, I'm going to assume that HHS will announce roughly 465,000 additional QHP selections in the 3rd week, for a total of around 1.23 million QHPs via HC.gov thorugh Friday, December 5th.
Should be interesting to see how far off I am on this...
The Daily Caller might be interested in the fact that while yes, the 2nd week numbers did drop substantially in both Massachusetts as well as HC.gov, as I expected, they've bounced right back up again in the third week (in MA, at least). In fact, if you look carefully you'll note that determinations are increasing a bit each day so far:
Anyway, using my 48.5% rule, I estimate that Massachusetts is up to roughly 28,200 QHP plan selections to date...or nearly 89% of their 2014 total. They seem to be averaging around 2,200 QHP selections per day.
That's right: It's conceivable that MA could hit their 2014 total (31,695 as of April 19th) by the end of business tomorrow. Assuming the "selected plans" percentage has gone higher than 48.5% this week, it's even conceivable that they'll hit it today.
Meanwhile, Medicaid enrollments are about to break the 50,000 mark as well.
NOTE: I've decided to make "Short Cuts" the standard name for ACA-related stories which are interesting but which I just don't have time to do full write-ups on. I've also given up on trying to cram the headlines of each story into the blog entry title.
ObamaCare outreach campaigns across the country are diving deeper into the hard-to-reach uninsured populations such as rural areas with hopes of driving up enrollment in its second year, several state directors said Wednesday.
“We have a much better sense because of data from the federal government on where are the uninsured,” Ryan Barker, vice president of health policy for the Missouri Foundation for Health, said in a conference call hosted by Families USA.
The Michigan Primary Care Association said it is trying to “fill the gaps” of health insurance coverage by relocating a majority of its staff to rural, less-populated areas.
I was feeling kind of sour after writing my previous post about Sen. Tom Harkin's unhelpful comments today, so thanks to contributor "Dee" for cheering me up with this bit of idiocy from the Daily Caller from a woman named Sarah Hurtubise:
Obamacare Sign-Ups Stall In Week Two
The number of Americans signing up for Obamacare coverage on HealthCare.gov slowed significantly in the second week of the open enrollment season for the health-care law.
Just over 303,000 people chose plans on HealthCare.gov between Nov. 22 and Nov. 28, down from 462,125 who selected insurance coverage on the federal website during its first week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday.
...The number of total applications submitted dropped by half in comparison to the first week. While over one million applications were submitted during the first week, that total fell to just 520,427 in the next seven days.
Today, he's followed up by IA Sen. Tom Harkin, who has the following incredibly insightful wisdom to spread to Democrats throughout the land:
“We had the votes in ’09. We had a huge majority in the House, we had 60 votes in the Senate," Harkin told The Hill, saying that the first Congress of President Barack Obama's administration should have passed “single-payer right from the get go or at least put a public option (which) would have simplified a lot.”
Huh. OK, I wasn't expecting MNsure's update until Friday this week (they put it out on Wednesday last week due to Thanksgiving), but fair enough:
Latest Enrollment Numbers
December 3, 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 8,874
MinnesotaCare 2,954 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 7,106
TOTAL 18,934
MNsure is running around 54% higher than their 2014 daily average so far, FWIW.
