This is great news for two reasons...not only has the Michigan Medicaid expansion already shot up another 5K in just the past day or two, but at least 20,000 ("tens of thousands") more people have been added to the Medicaid tally due to bulk transfers (similar to the 650K LIHP transfers in CA, 107K Commonwealth Care transfers in MA and so on):
The Healthy Michigan program has received nearly 55,000 applications since April first. 32,000 Michiganders have already had their applications approved. And tens of thousands more have been moved into the expanded Medicaid program from a different state health assistance program.
700K to 1.3M Additional Medicaid Enrollees through March, If Current Trends Continue.
However, March and April figures could bring more dramatic increases if outreach and enrollment efforts targeting the end of exchange open enrollment translate into new Medicaid enrollees. Specifically, if Medicaid sign-ups follow a similar pattern as exchanges, new Medicaid enrollees could reach 4.3 million by the end of March. In addition, recent figures released by CMS do not account for individuals assessed eligible for Medicaid through HealthCare.gov who have yet to be determined eligible by states.
For anyone interested, I'm scheduled to appear on the Craig Fahle Show tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at around 10:00am. The show is broadcast from WDET, 101.9 FM in Detroit. No idea what the rebroadcast schedule is but I assume it'll be available as a podcast archive at some point.
Meanwhile, my appearance on Left Jab Radio on Sunday night, complete with my son bursting into the room in the middle of the broadcast, is now available via their website. My segment kicks in around 14:45 in and lasts about 20 minutes, I think.
Finally, I've been hesitant about posting this publicly since there may be copyright issues involved (I'll take it down if necessary), but this strikes me as a reasonable/fair use situation (besides, I tried contacting the producer and no one ever got back to me); my apperance on America Tonight from about 2 weeks ago is now available via YouTube:
Everything else is secondary. Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation wins the day.
Having said that, I'm still not understanding this "3.9 million now covered" number, however, when the number covered thru "mid-March" was actually around 4.9 million:
By our estimate, 3.9 million people are now covered through the state and federal marketplaces. This number is lower than current estimates of marketplace enrollment through the end of March from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), perhaps because some of the HROS data were collected in early March. All HROS data collection reported here ended on March 28, and therefore missed the last three days of the open enrollment period, during which time there was a surge in enrollment.
As noted earlier, the only way 3.9M makes sense to me is if they assumed an 80% Paid rate, which would have been about right at that time.
At last, the big RAND Survey that everyone was freaking out about (and in some cases, completely misinterpreting) has actually been released!
The key numbers:
Using a survey fielded by the RAND American Life Panel, we estimate a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014.
The net result, according to RAND? An overall drop in the adult uninsured rate from 20.5% to 15.8%, or around 9.3M people nationally.
Put another way, the survey estimates that the share of uninsured American adults has dropped over the measured period from 20.5 percent to 15.8 percent. Among those gaining coverage, most enrolled through employer-sponsored coverage or Medicaid.
Assuming the RAND study is accurate (and most people from both sides of the aisle seem to think it's a pretty solid source), we may finally have an answer to the question "How many of them were UNINSURED???" Answer? Around 36%...of the first 3.9 million enrolled! That's right: Their study doesn't even include the 3.2 million more people who enrolled in individual QHPs via the exchanges after the survey concluded!
The New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange (NMHIX) reported a total of 26,412 New Mexicans had enrolled in qualified health plans as of March 31, 2014, according to the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance. This figure represents a 76 percent growth rate from the 15,012 enrollments confirmed at the end of February 2014.
In addition, as noted this morning, NM reports 11K OFF-exchange individual QHPs and another 13,500 off-exchange SHOP QHPs! The 11K are part of the alleged "9M" RAND QHPs, not sure how to handle the 13.5K SHOP QHPs, not that it makes much of a difference vs. 9M...
Oregon's Medicaid figure hasn't changed, but the exchange QHP tally is now up to an unspecific 59K (assuming this is as of yesterday):
Cruse said he became a full-fledged enrollee on a Moda plan in February. He’s now one of 59,000 people in Oregon who enrolled in private insurance after successfully navigating through the often cumbersome Cover Oregon process. Another 140,000 enrolled through the site on the Oregon Health Plan.
UPDATE: OK, scratch that. Looks like this article was quoting the 58,833 "total" QHP figure from the most recent official press releaseinstead of the "net" figure which was exactly 3K less: 55,833.
Leaving this up since it's already posted but sorry about the mixup.
Now that my home state of Michigan has finally joined the Medicaid expansion program, the numbers are starting to come out, and are pretty impressive right out of the gate:
The Department of Community Health says that as of 12 a.m. Monday, roughly 27,000 individuals had been enrolled in Healthy Michigan, which is intended to provide health insurance for hundreds of thousands more low-income adults.
Ah, at last...the Federal exchange state data is starting to trickle in now...
Nearly 100,000 South Carolinians enrolled in a health insurance policy on HealthCare.govbetween Oct. 1 and March 31, the director of the state's insurance department said Monday.
But only some of those 97,387 individuals - about 57 percent - have paid their first month's premium, Director Ray Farmer said.
The number of people actually enrolled may go up or down through May 1 - the deadline by which that first payment must be made.
Data released Monday by the S.C. Department of Insurance shows a sharp increase in Obamacare enrollment in South Carolina during the second half of March. Approximately 30,000 people in this state signed up for a plan during the last two weeks of open enrollment.
It's nice to be able to plug in SC's data, but the "How many have PAID???" thing is more amusing. 31% of the enrollees don't have their policy start until May 1st, so it's only 69% who you would even expect to have paid yet. Presumably the bulk of the 11% in between will pay over the next few weeks, and the 31% May-starts will start paying in increasing numbers as well.
I was recently contacted by someone representing one insurance company who wanted me to attempt to find out specialized enrollment data about one of their competitors.
I don't blame them for giving this a shot; the insurance industry is, no doubt, a highly competitive business.
However, get this straight: If you want inside info on one of your competitors, go elsewhere. If your competitor happens to provide enrollment data for me, the odds are that it will be published publicly, which means that you'll will be able to view it by simply visiting the website just like anyone else.
As a courtesy, I am not going to identify either the person/company who made the request (nor the company they were trying to get information about).
However, I cannot guarantee that I won't do so if this happens again.
