After an extended break for the MLK Jr. Day weekend, the MA Health Connector's daily dashboards are back in business.
Friday's weekly report gave the latest hard QHP total: 93,262 through 1/14. Over the following 5 days, there were an additional 7,321 QHP determinations made. Using the 45% rule of thumb, that means Massachusett's QHP total should be up another 3,300 or so, for a total of 96.5K through last night.
There's one very odd thing here, though...what the heck happened on Sunday the 18th? Yes, enrollments are normally much lower on weekends, but only 657 total including Medicaid enrollments? I've seen that sort of drop on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, but this was just a Sunday (and MLK Day wasn't until a day later, where the numbers are a bit low but not by that much).
Anyway, given that MA's enrollment deadline for February coverage is coming up in 3 days, they should be able to break the 100K milestone easily in the next few days.
Meanwhile, their Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollment tally is up to 188K, and should similarly break the 200K mark within the next few days as well.
I was burned a couple of weeks in a row by overestimating the actual private policy (QHP) selections to date in Massachusetts by around 5% or so. Last week I downshifted a bit (from 50% of eligibility determinations to 45%), resulting in an estimate of around 90,700 QHPs as of Tuesday.
Today the MA exchange released their weekly dashboard, with official QHP selections, and sure enough, I'm back on target: 93,262 QHP selections as of Wednesday the 14th, in addition to 178,912 Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollees.
As for the payment rate, on the surface it appears to be just 72% (67,265 out of 93,262). However, remember that the 93K figure includes 19,000 people who are enrolling for coverage starting in February. We know this because of this update from December 30th:
Of the 74,203 people who selected plans by the Tuesday deadline, 51,888 paid their first month’s premium by Friday.
TODAY, January 15th, is the deadline for anyone who wants to enroll in a private insurance policy for coverage starting on February 1st in most states (or to switch to a different policy if you have one but want to make a change starting in February).
After that, of course, we'll have the big February 15th deadline (for March 1st coverage), which will also be a big deal because it'll be the last chance many (not all) uninsured people have to get coverage before the door slams closed until next fall.
Remember, the penalty in 2016 for not having health insurance in 2015 is considerably higher than it was for 2014: Instead of 1% of your taxable income (or $95/person in your household, whichever is higher), the fee this year is 2% of your income or $325 per person.
Another likely 1,100 QHPs yesterday (out of 2,540 QHP eligibility determinations) means that Massachusett's QHP selection total should be up to around 90,700 by now. Medicaid has broken the 175K mark:
Massachusetts continues to set the example (are you paying attention, CoveredCA??), releasing near-daily enrollment reports and regular weekly reports with hard numbers on QHP enrollments every week (including payment data, I should note):
Again, assuming 45% QHP selections out of the 2,652 determined eligible for private policies, MA should have tacked on another 1,200 or so yesterday, bringing their QHP total up to around 89,600 to date.
In addition, they've enrolled another 3,709 into MassHealth (Medicaid).
Yes, that's right: We're quickly approaching the next big deadline: Private policy enrollment in time for coverage starting on February 1st.
Of the 3 monthly deadlines (January 1st start, February 1st start, March 1st start), this is the one getting the lowest amount of hype, for obvious reasons. The December 15th (or December 18, 23 or later, depending on the state) deadline was a huge deal because millions of people had to be renewed (either actively or automatically) in order to avoid any sort of a coverage gap, while a few million more people new to the exchanges jumped on board in time to start 2015 running. By my estimate, there should have been roughly 8.6 million people whose 2015 policies started on Jan. 1st.
As expected, things have quieted down considerably over the weekend. The confirmed QHP selection tally is 85,981 through January 7th. I'm walking back my "% of QHP determinations" a bit from 50% to 45%, which means that out of 5,390 determinations from the 8th - 11th, they should be a minimum of 2,400 more actual QHP selections by now.
That should mean the total up to around 88,400 as of last night, plus 168,130 people confirmed to have been added to Medicaid (MassHealth).
Hmmm...ok, it looks like I'll have to drop my "QHPs selected as a percent of determinations" rule of thumb back a bit. I figured that MA would be up to around 88K by today; instead they're just below 86,000. Still impressive, though...and the 160K Medicaid enrollments are equally so.
In addition, the payment rate is now up to 72% of the total, up from around 65% a couple of weeks ago. Again, remember that many of these 86K are for February start dates, so the payment rate is a bit misleading (for instance, it's possible that 60K out of 67K January enrollees have paid so far (90%) while only 2K out of 19K February enrollees have paid (11%), or something along those lines).
Again, it's also worth noting that in addition to the 86K QHPs selected, there's another 5,511 waiting for checkout and another 76K people who have filled out all their info and been approved for QHP coverage, but who haven't actually selected a policy yet. Some of these may be duplicates or abandoned accounts, of course, but assuming, say, 80% of them eventually do complete the process, that would bring Massachusetts up to a minimum of 151K QHPs by Feb. 15th. If 90% do so, that's a minimum of 159K...and that doesn't include the additional people who start/complete the process over the 40 days remaining in the enrollment period.
That's another 2,489 QHP determinations. Again, assume 50% of them followed through and selected a plan and that's at least 1,200 more added, bringing the likely total up to around 87,600 QHP selections to date, plus 160,824 confirmed Medicaid enrollees.
In the post-deadline, post-holiday period, Massachusetts seems to be settling into a pattern: Around 6,000 total eligibility determinations per day during the week, around 2,000/day on weekends. Of those, around 60% of them tend to be Medicaid enrollments, the other 40% for private policies (QHPs, which also include "ConnectorCare" in this case).
Yesterday there were another 6,508 added; 3,760 were immediately enrolled in MassHealth (Medicaid). The other 2,748 were for QHP applicants. As always, assuming at least 50% of those also selected a plan, that should tack another 1,400 to the total, bringing it to around 86,400 or so, while total Medicaid enrollments are now up to over 157K.
