There's a bunch of data updates to The Graph on both the QHP and Medicaid side, but the biggest change is the new Medicaid enrollee data out of California, which has jumped up by a whopping 789,000 people from the last data that I had. Note that many of these may be stuck in a major backlog, in which case this number may or may not continue to grow substantially over the next few months as they're processed.
Almost all of the other data is also on the Medicaid side, of course, as Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia etc. continue to quietly add expansion & woodworker enrollees to their tallies.
Finally, the estimated QHP total now sits at around 8.6 million (around 8,000 per day since the end of open enrollment, although this rate will likely drop down a bit as we move into the late summer and fall). On the other hand, that 8K/day is at the lower end of my current estimated range (currently estimated at between 9,000 - 12,000 per day, although this will fluctuate as more state exchange data comes in), so who knows?
Estimated Exchange QHPs as of June 30, 2014: 7.74M (1st Mo. Paid) / 8.60M (Total)
Individual QHP Range: (15.7M - 16.6M)
Medicaid/CHIP (7.0M - 9.4M)
Sub26ers (1.6M - 3.1M)
ESIs (156K confirmed; up to 8M more)
Estimated Total, all sources: (24 Million - 29 Million)
Michigan's belated Medicaid expansion program continues to grind along...not only is MI up to 96% of the first year goal already, it's actually up to 63% of the total number who are eligible state-wide!
Healthy Michigan Plan Enrollment Statistics
Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 315,578
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)
*Statistics as of June 30, 2014
*Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that WV has 143,000 residents eligible for Medicaid expansion. This means the state has now enrolled nearly 89% of them:
"The fast-track enrollments, on average, cost West Virginia about $6.50 less than would a full Medicaid application," the report states, estimating the staff worker received $14 dollars per hour.
Multiplying the 71,860 people who enrolled by that dollar amount provided a savings of roughly $470,000, according to the report. The state spent $200,000 in IT upgrades that also allowed it to mine the SNAP data base for potentially eligible residents. Subtracting those costs, the report argues the state saved about $270,000.
Bowling said the most up-to-date data show about 128,000 people have joined Medicaid through the expansion, much more than the roughly 91,000 anticipated to sign up. She said that success means the state probably won't send out another round of letters, but the numbers keep rising as those eligible may sign up at any time.
Some days I forget just how friggin' HUGE the state of California is...
Part of the delays can be attributed to high demand. In California, as in many of the 26 states that opted to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, people turned out in much higher numbers than projected. The state health department said it now expects 2.2 million people to enroll in Medi-Cal by next month -- 300,000 more than estimated last fall.
Roughly 1.4 million of those applicants were newly eligible for Medi-Cal, which was expanded under the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, to serve people who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. About 600,000 more were previously eligible for coverage but had not enrolled. Experts say the massive outreach campaigns across the country helped alert many of these people to their eligibility.
While the massive backlog issue is a serious problem, this story does give some nice solid numbers to plug into the Medicaid spreadsheet for the largest state in the country:
A nice unofficial update from Kentucky...but again, no QHP/Medicaid breakout. As I did last time, I'm going to play it cautiously and assume 90% Medicaid & 10% QHPs; since the combined total was around 421,000 last time, this brings the totals up to around 87,000 exchange QHPs and 363,000 Medicaid enrollees;
Sebelius later tweaked Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky by pointing out that Kentucky’s state health insurance program, the Kentucky Health Connector, now has 450,000 people enrolled in it and many of them had no health care before.
OK, I could be dead wrong about this; if so, I've provided a second Hobby Lobby-related item to justify having this blog entry. Let me put the 2nd item out there just in case:
The Washington State Insurance Commissioner just issued an interesting immediate response to the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision...interesting, because I'm a bit surprised that a state insurance commissioner (which I generally thought of as a fairly non-partisan job...although this jackass from Georgia obviously proved me wrong on that one) would post something like this, especially so quickly:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 30, 2014
Media contact: Public Affairs (360) 725-7055
Kreidler: Supreme Court dealt a blow to women’s reproductive rights today
OLYMPIA, Wash. – Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that threatens women’s access to contraceptives in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.
Let’s start with this howler: “Actually, the Obama administration never said that they’d reach 7 million paying customers by March 31st.”Seriously? Has Mr. Gaba really not read the September 5, 2013 memo from Marilyn Tavenner (chief of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) titled Projected Monthly Enrollment Targets for Health Insurance Marketplaces in 2014? Table 2b of that memo clearly shows an enrollment target of 7,066,000 for March 31, 2014. End of story.
The other day, Paul Krugman posted a short blog entry over at the New York Times in which he laid out 6 of the biggest anti-ACA attack points which have been, in his view, completely obliterated by reality:
1) "No one will sign up!"
2) "But how many have PAID????"
3) "OMG!! 5MM POLICIES CANCELLED!!!"
4) Rate Shock
5) "Not enough YOUNG INVINCIBLES to avoid a DEATH SPIRAL!"
6) "Overall healthcare costs will skyrocket!!"
In response, Chris Conover has posted a piece over at Forbes which claims to rebut Prof. Krugman point by point, basically calling him full of beans on 4 points and "generously" giving him a split decision on 2 others.
