Connecticut officially didn't have an extension period, but they did allow late enrollments on a "special case" basis, which apparently amounted to about 5,000 more people:
A total of 208,301 Connecticut residents enrolled in health care coverage through the Access Health CT online marketplace as of Sunday, the quasi-public agency announced Thursday.
The numbers reflect those who signed up before the March 31 deadline for open enrollment, plus 5,000 people who attempted to enroll by that date but encountered some difficulty, but were able to enroll over the last two weeks.
“Over the past two weeks, our team has made follow up calls to each of those individuals to assist them through the enrollment process, and we have now completed all open enrollment applications,” Kevin Counihan, head of the agency created as the state’s response to the federal Affordable Care Act, said in a news release.
Of the 208,301 enrollees, 78,713 enrolled with a private insurance carrier and 129,588 enrolled in Medicaid. Of the 78,713 residents who enrolled with a private insurance carrier, 78 percent received a tax subsidy and 22 percent did not.
No exact numbers here, but the wording of the article gives the rough breakdown:
About 3,500 Connecticut residents have enrolled in health insurance through the state’s health care exchange, Access Health CT, since the official open enrollment deadline passed on March 31. That’s in addition to the nearly 200,000 who enrolled by the health care deadline.
Access Health CT CEO Kevin Counihan said there were roughly 10,000 people in the state who wanted to enroll but couldn’t complete the process by deadline for some reason. Those people were told to leave their contact information, and that the state would follow up with them to make sure their enrollment was completed.
...Customers to the state marketplace could either buy insurance through one of three private carriers on the exchange, or get covered through Medicaid. The majority of those covered through the exchange — more than 120,000 — were covered under Medicaid.
Last night I posted that Washington State, which officially is not offering any sort of extension period, actually is allowing late enrollments on a special, case-by-case basis.
Then, earlier today, I learned that Hawaii (which I never really read an official policy on one way or the other, but which I thought was not extending enrollments) actually is doing so for up to potentially 1,100 people or so (192 to date).
Now it appears that Connecticut, which had been very explicit about their "no extension" policy...apparently is allowing up to 10,000 people to (potentially) sneak in under the wire after all:
Connecticut’s health insurance exchange ended its first open enrollment period with 197,878 people signed up for health care coverage, including 5,917 who enrolled Monday.
Connecticut reports their 3/31 totals...just shy of their 200K upgraded goal, but still very impressive:
A total of 197,878 residents secured a policy through the system, including 76,597 with a private carrier and 121,281 in Medicaid. Since open enrollment began last October, Access Health CT logged 801,509 unique website visitors.
Connecticut chimes in, with nearly 192K total, including 74K exchange QHPs...
As of Sunday night, 191,961 people had signed up for coverage, with 74,000 in private health plans and the rest in government-funded Medicaid plans, said Access Health CT's CEO Kevin Counihan.
He said the exchange had been "swamped" on Monday, prompting the predictions of possibly 200,000 total enrollees since open enrollment began in October. It's unclear how many of those people were previously uninsured. An analysis is expected this summer.
A very nice little update from CT. Clean numbers, and this is the first specific reference to policies being subtracted from the total due to non-payment (presumably for policies that started in January, February and possibly March), which is perfectly fine.
I've said all along that I have no problem at all with subtracting any people who truly are deadbeats or cancel their policy for one reason or another...it's just that they shouldn't be subtracted until they actually are past due, that's all.
Connecticut’s health insurance exchange has been enrolling between 3,000 and 4,000 members per day as the sign-up deadline approaches, exchange CEO Kevin Counihan said Thursday.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 178,601 state residents had signed up for Medicaid or private insurance through the exchange, Access Health CT.
Of those, 62 percent, or 111,050, will receive Medicaid coverage. The other 67,551 signed up for private insurance. Among private insurance customers, 78 percent are receiving federal financial aid to pay their premiums.
In an editorial piece from the The Courant newspaper, a non-exact QHP update is revealed: 65K, up from 62K as of 3/13:
Even without that money, Connecticut created a model portal in http://www.accesshealthct.com. This state should take pride in being among the most successful in enrolling at least 65,000 consumers in private health insurance plans. Maryland is reportedly considering abandoning its own dysfunctional portal and using Connecticut's in the next open enrollment period in November.
Connecticut continues to Do It Right®. Not only have they broken their own combined goal by 60%, they're also now 37% past their fair share of the CBO's original 7 million QHP figure. The exchange's CEO is quoted in the article as saying that CT doesn't expect to see much of a "March surge", but that isn't too concerning to me--they're already doing fantastic, so any enrollment rate increase wouldn't be as dramatic by comparison anyway.
Oh, yeah--and 92% of all of their enrollees to date are paid up, even more impressive considering that this should include people whose policies don't even start until April.
In Connecticut, 160,580 people have enrolled in coverage through Access Health CT, surpassing the exchange's self-imposed goal of 100,000 people. Counihan said roughly 62,000 of those who enrolled signed up for one of three private health plans represented on the exchange. Most of the remainder signed up for some form of Medicaid.
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!
For the most part this is just a standard update for Connecticut, which continues to be one of the most successful ACA exchanges with little drama; private QHPs are up another 2,065 from 58,469 on March 5th to 60,534 as of yesterday, while new Medicaid enrollments have gone up from 82,764 to 92,027, an increase of 9,263. Connecticut recently gave a "Paid QHP" percentage as 91%; assuming this still holds, I have them at 55K paid / 5,534 unpaid.
However, in a nice surprise, the latest update also separates the Medicaid numbers out into "strict expansion" (69,692) and "woodworkers" (22,335). This makes CT among only a handful of states to pinpoint the Medicaid enrollees in this way; hopefully the other expansion states will follow.
According to Access Health CT, 60,534 people have signed up for plans with Anthem, Healthy CT, and ConnectiCare. The rest, or 92,027 individuals, have signed up for Medicaid plans that are funded by the federal government.
In an editorial piece from the The Courant newspaper, a non-exact QHP update is revealed: 65K, up from 62K as of 3/13:
