Yes, that's right. I'm posting a blog entry about exactly one person being enrolled. Let it never be said that I'm not meticulous in documenting my data:
Saturday was the first day of open enrollment in Maryland and around the nation on exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act for people who do not get health insurance through employers. In Maryland, residents received their first shot at gaining coverage at an enrollment fair in Glen Burnie, hosted by the state's nonprofit partner HealthCare Access Maryland.
Banda arrived at 9:22 a.m., 38 minutes early. She was fourth in line. By 9:30 a.m., about a dozen people were waiting, and organizers decided to get the day started early. Less than an hour later, she became the first enrollee on the state's new exchange website. Her plan will cost her $97 a month, she said, and her co-pay will be zero.
"I feel awesome," she said. "It's a relief. I feel that it's going to work for me."
And yes, I've even plugged the number into The Spreadsheet :)
This makes the 5th state-run exchange to report hard numbers for Day One...this brings the verified Day One total to 2,515 QHP enrollees. Again, small but symbolically significant.
MNsure calls Saturday’s open enrollment a big improvement from what happened last year.
As of 3 p.m., 201 people had signed up for health insurance.
On average, customers waited for help a little more than one minute. Last year, the average wait was more than two hours.
More state exchange numbers are starting to trickle in...
The state Cabinet for Health and Human Services said in a release that as of 4 p.m. Saturday, there had been 6,200 unique visitors to the Kynect Web site; 2,415 calls handled by the Kynect contact center; 504 applications submitted; and 368 individuals who had newly enrolled in a qualified health plan.
In addition, 70 visitors to the Kynect store at Fayette Mall in Lexington had completed 33 applications for new coverage.
The "newly enrolled" is important as well, to distinguish it from current enrollees renewing their policies. Hopefully all of the exchanges will be sure to clarify this, but...
Top contributor deaconblues is back in action with three updates today: First up, Hawaii:
HONOLULU — Hawaii's health insurance exchange enrolled more than 40 people on the first day clients were able to sign up to be covered next year.
Another 60 applied for financial assistance to pay for premiums as of mid-afternoon, Jeffrey Kissel, the CEO of Hawaii Health Connector, said Saturday.
The insurance exchange expected to serve over 1,000 clients, either online, over the phone or in person by the time it closed for the day at 8 p.m.
As db notes, and as I noted in my Vermont/Massachusetts post this morning, the numbers may be tiny but it's symbolically very important, especially for the exchanges which had so many technical problems last year. Hawaii didn't get nearly as much press as OR, NV, MA, VT or MD, but they did have severe problems as well.
Combine that with the fact that it's such a small state which already had such a low uninsured population to begin with, and enrolling "only" 40 people or so on Day One is still an important starting point for their 2015 narrative.
I just posted about the first official enrollment numbers coming in from Day One of the 2015 Open Enrollment Period, with small but symbolically important numbers from Vermont and Massachusetts.
I also noted the following passage from today's Boston Globe story about it:
As of 6:30 p.m., 5,967 people had used the Connector website (MAhealthconnector.org) to find out what type of plan they were eligible for.
Of them 2,660 enrolled in MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, according to Haberlin, who is senior adviser to Maydad Cohen, the governor’s special assistant for project delivery.
The remaining 3,307 learned they were eligible to shop for a private health insurance. Of those, 1,704 selected a plan and 60 paid online (which is not required until Dec. 23).
So, you have 1,704 actually enrolling ("selecting a plan"), of which--GASP!!--only 60 have paid!!
OK, the numbers are small, but it's a start--and the fact that both are being released by states which had horrible technical issues last year is quite telling:
Vermont Health Connect processed 50 new applications and 201 renewals by Saturday at 1 p.m. The exchange was working well with some isolated minor issues in the morning that were quickly resolved, he said.
MASSACHUSETTS: 1,704 in first day:
#ACA coverage update: 2,660 enrolled in @MassHealth; 3,307 eligible for @HealthConnector coverage with 1,704 plans selected. Total: 5,967
I've rantedseveral times before about the importance of current Obamacare private policy enrollees making sure to actually visit the exchange website, shop around, log into your account and manually re-enroll for 2015, even if nothing has changed at your end (ie, no changes in income, dependents, residence etc).
There are many reasons NOT to auto-renew, most of which are financial in nature. The short version is, you could easily end up paying more than you thought next year by not switching (in addition to premium changes, your tax credit might drop even if your income hasn't changed due to how it's calculated), and you could pay substantially less next year if you do switch to another policy (premiums are actually dropping in many markets).
OK, I'm as geeked as any ACA supporter, but some context and clarification is important here. Last year there was a lot of confusion about the distinction between someone:
creating an account
submitting an application
selecting/committing to a plan, and
paying their first month's premium.
The 8.02 million figure through April 19th touted by the administration last spring represented 3) Selecting a plan.
Of that, the actual number who followed through and 4) paid their first premium (thus activating--or "effectuating" to use the industry lingo--their policy) ended up being roughly 88%, or around 7.1 million.
Yes, I know, I know: Who wouldn't want to spend an hour watching Andrew Sprung (aka xpostfactoid1) and myself discuss the minutiae of the 2015 Open Enrollment Period, my projections from the other day and the design/usability improvements at Healthcare.Gov?? Contain yourselves, people!!
(OK, OK, you don't have to watch the full hour--it's broken into 5-8 minute snippets)
However, I can say that based on my (very limited) poking around the web, it appears that not only is Healthcare.Gov doing fine, so are most of the state-run exchanges...except for two of them (and not the ones you'd think):
California: I heard anecdotal evidence that CoveredCA was having some significant issues on opening day, but it wasn't until I checked their Twitter feed and saw a series of posts like this that I grew concerned:
Washington State: The WAHealthplan Finder issued this notice this afternoon:
Status Updates & Maintenance Schedule
November 15, 2014
California: I heard anecdotal evidence that CoveredCA was having some significant issues on opening day, but it wasn't until I checked their Twitter feed and saw a series of posts like this that I grew concerned:
