I haven't updated the graph with this yet, but both the front page "quick stats" block and the spreadsheet now include my rough guesstimate for the final mop-up period from 4/16 - 4/30...I'm guessing an extra 93,000 or so people are being tacked on via stray paper applications, special cases and oddball "super-extension periods" in Nevada, Oregon, DC and Hawaii, etc.
this should bring the grand total through the end of April up to around 8.14 million, of which I expect AT LEAST 7.5 million to have paid their premiums by late May.
Of the pile of submissions and requests which piled up last week, at least a half-dozen were basically the same question: Where the hell is the official March HHS report? Obviously that report from Inside Health Policy claiming that they'd release the report back on the 17th, complete with early April data, was flat-out wrong.
The irony is, of course, that a) no one has been anticipating this report more than myself (it was supposed to mark the end of this project, after all...although obviously the situation has changed...more on that later); b) I was previously concerned that they'd release the report too early (cutting off the last 2 days of March and only including 3/02 - 3/29); and c) it's actually just as well that they didn't release it last week, since I was in no position to do anything with the data anyway (still on the mend, but I'm at least able to type up a few updates this morning, as you can tell).
"Healthy Michigan" is the plan which specifically refers to ACA expansion in MI only (36,307 of these are actually bulk-transfers from an existing program, already listed separately on the spreadsheet):
Healthy Michigan Plan Enrollment Statistics
Total Healthy Michigan Plan Beneficiaries: 139,774
Washington State finally wraps things up with their final numbers, breaking 164K QHPs and keeping their Strict Expansion / Woodworker ratio to the same 2:1 ratio that it's been pretty much the entire enrolllment period:
The state has previously reported that 147,000 people signed up for private health coverage, but said Wednesday that the total grew to 164,062 as officials finalized applications after the March 31 deadline. Open enrollment began last October.
Updated enrollment numbers from Oct. 1 to March 31 are included below.
Qualified Health Plans: 164,062
Medicaid Newly Eligible Adults: 285,275
Medicaid Previously Eligible but not Enrolled: 137,930
Not that the raw numbers add up to much, but the 603 total lives covered by SHOP policies is mildly interesting, since it was at only 269 as of 3/31:
30,396 Applications completed in the Individual Marketplace 8,592 Individuals and families enrolled in the Individual Marketplace
568 Employers applied to SHOP Marketplace 603 Employees and dependents enrolled via SHOP Marketplace
This article is interesting not so much because of how close I came to the actual situation in Idaho (I had ID woodworkers pegged at around 5,600; the actual number is more like 5K even), but because of how far off Idaho's own official prediction on "woodworkers" was--they were assuming more than 7x that number:
But even without Idaho expanding its program, experts predicted a surge in Medicaid enrollment. A report prepared for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare by Milliman Inc. predicted that more than 35,000 people would join Medicaid when they learned they already qualified for it. That was known as the "woodwork" group, for eligible people coming out of the woodwork.
The report said the cost of new enrollment — aside from the expansion — would total about $14.8 million in this fiscal year, then rise to between $32 million and $45 million per year over the next decade. That's not quite what happened, at least in these early months, Shanahan said.
"We just haven't seen the large increases we had expected," he said. Only about 35 percent — 5,000 people — of new Medicaid members are from the "woodwork" group, he said.
Pennsylvania’s Medicaid enrollment is up by more than 18,000 people since the Oct. 1 launch of the Affordable Care Act’s online health plan marketplaces.
The state's enrollment bump in the program for low-income families and individuals is small, though it coincides with larger jumps being experienced in other Republican-led states. Supporters of the ACA are crediting the 2010 federal health care overhaul with encouraging more uninsured to examine their health coverage options. Subsequently they discover that they were already eligible for state-funded insurance programs.
It’s called the “woodwork” effect — people who may have been eligible for Medicaid or related children’s programs all along only learned of their eligibility during the six-month push to sign Americans up for health insurance.
Nevada is one of the few states extending their open enrollment beyond the "standard" 4/15 deadline; residents have until 5/30 to complete their enrollments for 2014:
Update as of 4/19: 45,291 Consumers have selected Qualified Health Plans, 32,365 have paid.
This AR update is noteworthy for being the first enrollment update I've received which actually includes a reference to...myself!
Through yesterday, almost 45,000 Arkansans have selected plans on the Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace, the new marketplace created by Obamacare, according to information released today by the Arkansas Insurance Department (see county by county map above). Open enrollment is now closed, though people who submitted a paper application by April 7 have until the end of the month to enroll and pick a plan. We may also see this number creep up in the next few weeks as the carriers continue to receive data from the feds.
First, apparently the ACA is such a "socialist, anti-capitalist" enemy of the free market that the private, for-profit insurance companies are just fleeing for the hills. Oh wait, actually...
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, said all 11 current health plans have indicated they plan to return next year. He also said three new plans have submitted letters of intent indicating they may compete on the exchange in 2015.
