Whew! Lots of updates today, although most of them have been fairly small. Today we see that Oregon continues to make steady progress in spite of their exchange website still being a mess. They've increased their Private QHP tally by another 11% (from 31,664 to 35,247) and their Medicaid/CHIP tally by 16.7% (from 57,858 to 67,517) via the exchange, plus another 475 added via their "fast track" program.
As noted in the previous Oregon update, there's already 120,155 "fast track" enrollees included in the December CMS report, so I'm only adding the difference since then (3,189) to the actual spreadsheet.
Private insurance: 35,247
Oregon Health Plan: 67,517
Oregon Health Authority “Fast Track”
Oregon Health Plan: 123,344
OK, don't let the huge percentages fool you...the actual number of Private QHPs only went up from 3,273 to 5,062, and exchange-based Medicaid enrollments increased from 1,058 to 1,396.
Not sure where the article is getting it's "24%" and "34%" numbers, however. 5,062 is 54.6% higher than 3,273, and the combined total of 6,458 is 49.1% higher than 4,331.
Enrollment in new Obamacare insurance plans increased by about 24 percent in the last month, Delaware Secretary of Health and Social Services Rita Landgraf told the Delaware Health Care Commission this morning....
Since enrollment started Oct. 1, 5,062 people enrolled in plans through the insurance marketplace, Landgraf said. Another 1,396 gained coverage in Medicaid, for those whose income is up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level....In all, 6,458 people have new coverage, up 34 percent from the January report.
As contributor deaconblues put it, "First mention I've heard of 30K new people being enrolled into Medicaid (in addition to the 130K transitioned from the CommonwealthCare plans)."
Before delving into the website issues, Patrick said Massachusetts still has the highest coverage rate in the nation at 97 percent and faced unique challenges to implementing the ACA because of past health reform efforts. He noted that on Jan. 1 130,000 subscribers to coverage through the Connector were successfully transitioned to new plans under the expansion of MassHealth and 30,000 new adults and children were enrolled in the Medicaid program.
So, after yesterday's big CBO report which had some interesting (and, in some cases, extremely misinterpreted) points to make about the impact of the Affordable Care Act, today there was another report released today from Avalere Health which has gotten a lot of attention, regarding the number of new Medicaid/CHIP enrollees which have been added specifically due to the ACA. I don't know much about Avalere Health, but they tout themselves as a healthcare think tank/analysis firm. From their "About Us" page:
"Avalere is a vibrant community of innovative thinkers dedicated to solving the challenges of the healthcare system. We deliver a comprehensive perspective, compelling substance, and creative solutions to help you make better business decisions. We partner with stakeholders from across healthcare to help improve care delivery through better data, insights, and strategies."
OK, fair enough. According to Avalere:
Avalere estimates that from October through December 2013, between 1.1M and 1.8M people have newly enrolled in Medicaid as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
These estimates are concentrated in states expanding Medicaid—with expansion states representing roughly three-fourths of total estimated new Medicaid sign ups.
Now, on the surface, even the high end of this range (1.8 million people) would appear to be wildly divergent from my own recent analysis, which currently has "new Medicaid/CHIP enrollments" at around 7.5 million. However...
Minnesota's Private QHP enrollments went up about 3% between January 18 and February 1st, from 27,775 to 28,611, while Medicaid/CHIP enrollments went up a more dramatic 18%, from 52,225 to 61,784 (when combining Medicaid & CHIP along with MinnesotaCare, which still counts).
Insurance sign-ups through Minnesota's health care marketplace continued to grow into February to more than 90,000 people, but enrollment continues to be weighted more toward public plans over private insurance.
MNsure released its latest enrollment measures on Wednesday, which covered mid-January through Feb. 1. By that date, more than 28,000 people had enrolled in commercial plans — an increase of about 3 percent from two weeks earlier.
In addition, Minnesota's SHOP (Small Business) exchange tally has gone up a bit as well, to 541 employees covered; multiplying this by a conservative average of 1.8 per employee household brings it up to around 974 people covered by MN SHOP plans.
As always, Washington State is the Gold Standard in breaking down their enrollments; Private QHPs are up to over 175,000 (88,071 paid, 87,524 unpaid as of January 30), up from about 168,000 a week earlier. Medicaid enrollments are up to over 257,000 (172,715 newly eligible and 85,372 "woodworkers"), up from about 238,000 the prior week.
Colorado does this odd thing where they simply upload an image file with the latest metrics, which can be irritating but also handy. To that end, here's their latest tally which runs through January 31st:
From this we have the latest Private QHP enrollments up slightly to 69,627 (from a prior estimate of 68,999 a few days ago) and Medicaid enrollments up to 117,607 from 101,730 two weeks earlier. It's important to note that Colorado's Medicaid tally supposedly includes only brand-new enrollees, not renewals. This represents a 15.6% increase from 1/15.
An interesting, but hardly surprising development today: The CBO, which had previously projected that appx. 7 million people would enroll in Private QHPs via the Health Exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (as well as 9 million additional people enrolling in Medicaid or CHIP thanks to the expansion provisions within the ACA) by the end of 2014 have now reduced both of these projections by 1 million apiece, to 6 million and 8 million in the first year. Thanks to Dan Diamond for bringing this report to my attention.
You have to scroll all the way down to page 108 of the report to find it, but here's the relevant screen shot, and the relevant paragraph from pages 112 - 114 of the report:
4,975 more people enrolled since January 30. No Private/Public breakdown, but based on the existing ratio, I'm guessing around 23% Private QHP / 77% Medicaid/CHIP, or 1,145 / 3,830. This brings KY up to 45,305 and 155,172 respectively.
Add another 55K direct new Medicaid enrollments and you're at 210K on the Public side.
