A spokesman for the insurance exchange, Ben Davis, said Colorado already has enrolled enough people to make the Connect For Health Colorado exchange sustainable.
Some states have extended open enrollment deadlines because of glitches in their exchanges. Davis said Colorado won't extend the deadline but will give credit to those who attempted to enroll by the end of the month.
This is also a perfect opportunity to work in a special Guest Post by contributor Esther Ferington, who gives a nice roundup of just what will happen to the ACA Enrollment situation after March 31st:
What Happens after March 31st? Guest Post by Esther Ferington
The Private QHP side is just a confirmation of the 100K update from this morning with an exact figure (100,112), but this also provides the updated Medicaid total as well (151,050):
Whoa. Not an official update, but Colorado already had 93K QHPs as of Thursday the 13th; they're now at over 100K as of yesterday (the 17th). that's 1,750/day for the past 4 days, or 1,033/day in March so far. It doesn't specify QHPs vs. Medicaid, but CO was already at 135K Medicaid as of 3/01, so yes, these should all be private QHPs.
For comparison, Colorado was at 536/day in February, so CO in March is nearly double the February rate.
More than 100,000 Coloradans purchased health insurance through Connect for Health Colorado. 14 days left to enroll! http://t.co/jXVrGTnHQ0
No official update, but an article in yesterday's Coloradoan.com gives the Private QHP number as 93,000 as of Thursday, up 5,234 from 87,766 as of March 8th:
WASHINGTON — At least 100,000 Coloradans are expected to sign up for private health insurance on Connect for Health Colorado by March 31, according to the head of the state’s online health exchange.
With 93,000 people enrolled as of Thursday, “we are really exceeding our expectations,” Patty Fontneau, CEO of Connect for Health Colorado, told reporters in a conference call arranged by Families USA, a health care consumer advocate.
Colorado's offiicial metrics press release from last week only runs through March 1st, but contributor deaconblues found an interesting county-by-county breakdown which runs through the 8th. No Medicaid data, but the QHP number is up to 87,766, a 2,885 increase over a week earlier.
UPDATE: On the down side, I was off by 4% this time around.
On the up side, I UNDERESTIMATED:
Actual Feb. enrollments: 942,833, for a total of 4,242,325 thru 3/01/14.
Sarah Kliff at Vox just announced that the February HHS report is expected to be released today at around 4:00pm. A few items in anticipation of that:
As I've noted several times, I'm projecting the report to total around 902,000 exchange-based private QHP enrollments for the month of February (technically 2/02 - 3/01)
If accurate, this would bring the cumulative total of exchange-based private QHP enrollments to 4.202 million (from 10/1/13 - 3/01/14)
From the data I have, the average daily enrollment rate in February was almost identical to that of January, which had about 1.146 million QHP enrollments. HOWEVER, the January report included five weeks of data (12/28 - 2/01), while the February report will only include four weeks (2/02 - 3/01). Therefore, even at the same daily average, it'll be about 20% lower no matter what.
Don't be surprised if Peter Lee of CoveredCA decides to steal some thunder by announcing that California has enrolled 1,000,000 QHPs all by itself either today or tomorrow. However, that would include the past 10 days, while the HHS number will only run thru 3/01.
If you want to get REALLY specific, call it 902,800 and 4,202,292.
I've been dead-on target 6 times in a row without hyping up my projections beforehand. This time I am hyping myself up beforehand, so I'll probably be way off...but as long as I've UNDERestimated the tally, I'll be perfectly fine with that...
The report will be released in about 5 minutes, but my kid gets home from school in about 10, so it'll be a good 20 minutes before I can really post anything. Feel free to follow Sarah Kliff of Vox in the meantime!
Colorado continues to be one of the more smoothly-running state exchanges, adding 5,102 Private QHPs and 7,341 new Medicaid enrollees in the 2nd half of February. These represent a 6.4% and 5.7% increase respectively. Unfortunately, their daily QHP rate for February, which had looked to be slightly higher than January, was actually down about 8% per day. As always, in CO, the Medicaid number listed only includes actual ACA expansion (woodworkers are included separately in the CMS reports; there are no renewals or churn the number below).
Here's a bonus data tidbit that's also a precursor to a new feature that I'm adding later this week: Out of the total uninsured in the state, Colorado has a potential QHP pool of around
325,000 residents, and a potential Medicaid pool of around 332,000 people, once you remove undocumented immigrants.
Assuming 60% of QHP enrollees were previously uninsured, this means Colorado has enrolled:
A flood of new enrollment data today! Colorado just posted their latest update, which runs through 2/17. Private QHPs are up from 69,627 as of 1/31 to 79,779 as of 2/17 (an increase of 10,152), while Medicaid enrollments are up to 128,219 from 117,607 as of Jan. 31st (an additional 10,612).
This is also more good news for the "February Drop-off" issue, since this knocks the likely drop-off in average daily enrollment from 11% down to 10% even:
This moves the likely February enrollment up from 820K to 830K, based on 13 states representing 98.7 million people, or 31.4% of the country.
Since the grand total was almost precisely 3.3 million as of 2/01, adding 830K in February would bring the total up to 4.13 million.
An article in Bloomberg Businessweek about the sluggish early enrollment in SHOP (Small Business) exchanges includes this graphic, which gives updated enrollment data for 5 states. I already have the 2,155 California and 5,000 New York numbers, but didn't have any data for Connecticut or Kentucky until now. Colorado was up to 1,055 previously, so this update bumps it up by 241. Add that to the 500 in Connecticut and 200 in Kentucky, and it's 941 more people with health insurance who didn't have it before. Not much, but every addition counts...
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.
