Some good news (relatively speaking) on the Massachusetts front: As you'll recall, the state which inspired the ACA (ironically due to the program being spearheaded by then-Governor Mitt Romney), and which has been operating under their state-level version of the law smoothly for some years now, had an incredibly embarrassing misfire with their ACA-specific exchange website. After hobbling through the first enrollment period (and leaving over 200,000 residents in healthcare limbo as a result), it was determined that the existing site was such a mess that they had two choices: Either replace the existing software with an entirely new system, or drop the whole thing and move over to the Federal exchange as Oregon is doing.
Instead, Massachusetts decided to hedge their bets and pursue both: They've been working with a new vendor to rebuild their own exchange from scratch, while simultaneously arranging for a quick move to HC.gov just in case Plan A doesn't work out.
The good news is that so far, anyway, the new platform seems to be working out in early testing, though it's way too early to be sure of anything:
Wow! This editorial is fairly short but chock full of great up-to-date enrollment data: Exchange QHP enrollment has risen exactly 6,000 people since April 19 (an increase of over 30%); the Medicaid expansion tally is up by 4,556 to 132,556 people (almost 93% of the total eligible), and the overall uninsured rate has plunged from 17% to just 6.6%...all in less than 10 months. Amazing.
President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act is a superb success in West Virginia, according to new reports.
A total of 132,556 lower-income West Virginians have gained coverage through the Medicaid expansion approved by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. An additional 25,856 were able to enroll in subsidized private insurance plans. And about 18,000 young adults were allowed to remain covered by their parents’ policies until age 26.
That’s more than 176,000 Mountain State people who gained the ability to visit a doctor, get prescriptions filled or receive hospital care. Hurrah. It’s a big advance for compassion and humane values. Everyone should have access to medical treatment, and nobody should be left out.
OK, I've just updated The Graph again, with two major changes: First, I've updated it to include the new May 2014 CMS Medicaid/CHIP report data, which nudges the total up by several hundred thousand.
In addition, however, I've also done something which has been on my mind for awhile now: For the first time, I've removed the UNPAID Exchange QHP section from the graph completely.In addition, I've knocked the "Paid" percent down one more notch to 89%--not because I've changed my mind about the eventual paid percentage hitting 90%, but because at any given time the most recent enrollees (from the past couple of months) will fall below that threshold, meaning the overall paid percentage will be slightly lower.
OK, I just received the report itself, so it'll take awhile to slog through the numbers, but here's the chief takeaways:
Medicaid enrollment continues to increase all across the country, especially in those states that have expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act.
As of the end of May, 6.7 million more individuals were enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as compared to the baseline period from July through September 2013, an increase of 11.4 percent. That includes more than 920,000 additional people enrolled in May as compared to April in the 48 states and the District of Columbia that reported data.
As we’ve seen for months, growth was more pronounced in 26 states (including the District of Columbia) that had adopted and implemented the Medicaid expansion by the end of May. Enrollment in those states rose by 17 percent, while states that have not expanded reported only a 3 percent increase.
Oregon continues to rack up impressive QHP numbers, although their daily average is definitely slowing down as we move farther from their "extended-extension period". Even so, their net enrollments are still up another 1,258 since 6/24, while Medicaid enrollment has gone up just 1,221. My suspicion for the Medicaid enrollment drop-off (also noted by contributor deaconblues) is that they've simply run out of Medicaid-eligible people in the state...which makes sense seeing how they've added 355K people to the program since January (227K via the exchange + another 128K via their "fast track" program), when the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that there were only 260,000 uninsured people even eligible for Medicaid to begin with!
Contrary to the conservative meme that everything in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an unprecedented overreach of federal power, the ACA contraceptives mandate was patterned on longstanding state “insurance-equity” laws. Such laws promote the health of women, children and families by assuring access to prescription contraceptives. Though not superseded by the decision handed down by the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, these state laws never actually pertained to Hobby Lobby or any other large employer with pockets deep enough to avoid state-regulated insurance products altogether by self insuring.
A few days ago, several people sent me a link to this story from the Philadelphia Inquirer which discussed the impact of the ACA on Medicaid enrollment in the 26 states which expanded the program vs. the 24 which haven't done so (including Pennsylvania), and the positive impact it would have on PA's uninsured rate if they were to do so.
However, the following passage seemed rather strange to me, and I didn't want to post anything about it until I cleared up the mystery:
Pennsylvania and the 23 other states that haven't expanded Medicaid have signed up fewer than three million people for the program. That's in sharp contrast to the almost 10 million people enrolled by the 26 states and District of Columbia that expanded Medicaid when the marketplace opened November.
Hot on the heels of this morning's Commonwealth Study survey, which pegs the reduction of the number of uninsured adults at 5% (around 9.5 million, plus perhaps 2.5 million children under 18, for a total reduction of around 12 million) comes another study by the Urban Institute, which gives a slightly smaller reduction (4% of all adults nationally, or around 8 million...or around 10.5 million or so if you add children in).
The Commonwealth Fund study which is causing such a buzz today contains a lot of interesting data points. The one which is the most bothersome is this:
It's not terribly surprising that expansion states saw their uninsured rate drop more than non-expansion states, but this seems like too much of a difference (11% vs. 2%)...until you remember that this only applies to people in poverty...that is to say, only the Medicaid/CHIP data is relevant here, as noted by Jeffrey Young in his Huffington Post piece.
A wonderful new survey by the Commonwealth Fund was released today, chock full of all sorts of data-nuggety goodness:
We’ve known for a few months now that lots of people signed up for health insurance this year in new marketplaces. A new survey shows that the people who did so are also pretty happy with their purchases.
The survey, from the Commonwealth Fund, a research group, came to similar conclusions as other surveys about the expansion of health insurance. It found that about 15 percent of adults younger than 65 now lack health insurance, down from 20 percent before the Affordable Care Act rolled out in January.
What was more surprising is that people who got the new coverage were generally happy with the product. Overall, 73 percent of people who bought health plans and 87 percent of those who signed up for Medicaid said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new health insurance. Seventy-four percent of newly insured Republicans liked their plans. Even 77 percent of people who had insurance before — including members of the much-publicized group whose plans got canceled last year — were happy with their new coverage.
