I was rather surprised to see another update from MNsure today, since they've generally been issuing weekly updates on Fridays this year, but they decided to issue a special press release to trumpet attaining the 100,000 enrollment mark:
MNsure tops 100,000 Total Enrollments
Less than four weeks remain before February 15 open enrollment deadline
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Today, MNsure announced more than 100,000 Minnesotans have enrolled in comprehensive, affordable health insurance coverage since November 15, the start of the 2015 open enrollment period.
“We are encouraged by this news, as well as the fact that so many Minnesotans are obtaining the health insurance coverage they need through MNsure,” said CEO Scott Leitz. “As we enter the final weeks of this open enrollment period, we’re stepping on the gas to make sure all Minnesotans know about the benefits of MNsure.”
Last week, with autorenewals added into the mix, MNsure was sitting at 41,704 QHPs as of January 5th. They just posted another update running through last night (the date of the numbers is actually as of the night before, as made clear from the corresponding press releases):
Latest Enrollment Numbers: January 16, 2015
MNsure will release 2015 enrollment metrics weekly, and will present a more robust metrics summary to the MNsure Board of Directors at each regularly-scheduled board meeting. During weeks that MNsure is closed on Friday, the enrollment metrics update will be released earlier in the week.
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments Medical Assistance 38,405
MinnesotaCare 16,056
Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 43,461
TOTAL 97,922
MNsure will release 2015 enrollment metrics weekly, and will present a more robust metrics summary to the MNsure Board of Directors at each regularly-scheduled board meeting. During weeks that MNsure is closed on Friday, the enrollment metrics update will be released earlier in the week.
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments Medical Assistance 29,936
MinnesotaCare 12,225
Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 41,704
TOTAL 83,865
The major change here isn't so much new QHPs (just 1,844 of the increase) as the autorenewals (or "passive renewals" as MNsure calls them) which made up 8,701 of the total:
Updated @MNsure enrollments: 83,865 total. 41,704 in QHP (8,701 of which are passive renewal), 12,225 in MinnesotaCare and 29,936 in MA
As I noted last week, Minnesota had around 41,000 people enrolled in 2014 exchange QHPs as of October, and due to PreferredOne dropping off the exchange (with around 60% of the market), along with a state law which requires insurance companies to continue providing the same policy as long as a current enrollee wants to keep it (and keeps paying premiums), that meant that MN's renewal/re-enrollment situation was especially unusual compared to most states.
MNsure will release 2015 enrollment metrics weekly, and will present a more robust metrics summary to the MNsure Board of Directors at each regularly-scheduled board meeting. During weeks that MNsure is closed on Friday, the enrollment metrics update will be released earlier in the week.
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments
Medical Assistance 26,540
MinnesotaCare 11,152 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 31,159
TOTAL 68,851
Hmmm...OK, I admit I'm starting to get a bit concerned about Minnesota. True, they bumped out their January deadline enrollment date until tomorrow (New Year's Eve), so there's still 5 day's worth of data to go including what I assume will be some sort of surge today and tomorrow, but I was expecting them to be doing a bit better at this point. They had just over 41,000 2014 enrollees as of mid-October. Nationally over 90% of 2014 enrollees should be renewed either manually or automatically, but MN has a special situation given that the largest insurance company on MNsure dropped out, leaving over 60% of the total to find something else or be moved off of the exchange completely.
MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31
MNsure sent this bulletin at 12/19/2014 11:34 AM CST
December 19, 2014
MNSURE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31
Decision follows transfer of enrollment information to insurance carriers and aligns enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage
ST. PAUL, Minn.—In an effort to provide more time for Minnesotans who qualify for financial help available only through MNsure, the organization today announced it would extend the enrollment deadline to December 31 for January 1 coverage.
Minnesotans must now enroll in coverage through MNsure by noon on Wednesday, December 31, to have their coverage effective on January 1, 2015. The change comes at a time of high interest in MNsure and as many health insurance companies recently extended their own enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage.
As of Thursday the 12th, MNsure had enrolled about 14.4K people for private 2015 policies. Thanks to the December Surge Weekend, this has jumped up by more than 9,300 more:
Latest Enrollment Numbers
December 17, 2014
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments
Medical Assistance 17,888
MinnesotaCare 7,681 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 23,797
TOTAL 49,366
Hmmm...MNsure is currently enrolling people at 3x the rate they did all of last year. Assuming that this doesn't include automatic renewals, that's pretty good. They bumped their enrollment deadline for January coverage out until Friday afternoon (4:30pm, for some reason), which is even better.
UPDATE: According to this Modern Healthcare article, only about 42% of MN's enrollments to date are renewals. In one sense, this is good since it suggests that they still have a good 31K potential renewals to work with.
As you can see from the graphic I posted yesterday (and had to revise several times throughout the day), the official enrollment deadline for private policies starting on January 1st, 2015 has now passed for all 37 states operating via HealthCare.Gov, as well as residents of DC, Hawaii and Kentucky. It's certainly possible that any or all of these will announce some sort of "special circumstances" allowance for those who didn't make the midnight cut-off (10pm in Alaska), but I'm assuming those would be done strictly on a case-by-case basis.
OK, so what about the remaining 11 states?
Well, 4 of them (MD, MA, RI & WA) had later deadlines for January coverage all along: Maryland on 12/18 (Thursday) and the other 3 on 12/23 (next Tuesday).
New York and Idaho bumped their deadlines out from yesterday until 12/20 (Saturday), although Idaho had previously claimed that their deadline was 12/23, but are now claiming that it was originally 12/15. I still don't understand what happened there, but so be it: 12/20 it is for ID.
