Last year, I noted several times that regardless of what your opinion may be of the ACA's Individual Mandate Penalty (which was, until this year, either $695 per adult/$348 per child or 2.5% of your household income, unless you received an exemption), one of the key things to keep in mind about the penalty is that any impact it has on encouraging people to go ahead and enroll in ACA-compliant healthcare coverage is entirely dependent on two things:
NY State of Health Releases 2019 Open Enrollment Report
Essential Plan and Qualified Health Plan Enrollment Reach Record Levels
ALBANY, N.Y. (May 9, 2019)—NY State of Health, the state’s official health plan Marketplace, today released detailed demographic data on the more than 4.7 million New Yorkers enrolled in comprehensive health coverage through the close of the sixth open enrollment period on January 31, 2019. Marketplace enrollment is now at its highest point ever, and Essential Plan and Qualified Health Plan enrollment reached record levels of more than 1 million people.
“It’s evident in the numbers released today that there is high demand for quality, affordable health coverage,” said NY State of Health Executive Director, Donna Frescatore. “The 2019 record enrollment levels are proof that New York’s Marketplace remains strong.”
NY State of Health 2019 Open Enrollment Report Highlights
However, this report was released amidst a gusher of other major ACA/healthcare news stories over the course of the week, and I never really got around to a deep dive. I'm still swamped, but I figured I should at least go back and do a little more analysis today.
OK, first of all, I need to clean up the discrepancies between the OE6 enrollment data I had and what's in the official CMS report. Every year there are always slight variations in a few states, usually when it comes to the state-based exchanges, and this year is no exception. There were differences reported in six states; in five of them, CMS reported lower enrollment numbers; in one the CMS tally is higher:
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) today released the Health Insurance Exchanges 2019 Open Enrollment Report. With the Trump Administration’s focus on making healthcare more affordable, the report confirms another successful open enrollment period coinciding with a stabilization of premiums after years of substantial increases. Specifically, the report shows plan selections in Exchange plans in the 50 states and D.C. remained steady at 11.4 million. This represents a minimal decline of around 300,000 plan selections from the same time last year. Also, as outlined in the report, average total premiums for plans selected through HealthCare.gov dropped by 1.5 percent from the prior year, the first decline since the Exchanges began operations in 2014.
This was actually released a month ago, but I was a bit preoccupied with my kid's Bar Mitzvah at the time (he did great, by the way, thanks for asking!).
Access Health CT, Connecticut's state-based ACA exchange, released their 2019 Open Enrollment Period report, and it's one of the most extensively detailed & granual looks at the year's enrollment data. They've included the normal stuff, of course (subsidized vs. unsubsidized, metal levels, age and income brackets, etc)...but they've also done a very deep dive into data points I haven't seen before by cross-indexing categories.
For instance, not only did they break out "enrollment attrition reasons" (that is, why 2018 enrollees who didn't renew their policies chose not to), but they actually broke that out into what those enrollees' financial assistance status was.
The level of detail here is pretty impressive and somewhat overwhelming (there's 25 pages of charts & graphs), but if you're a healthcare nerd interested in what's going on in the Nutmeg State, knock yourself out!
Via Email from the Connect for Health Colorado exchange...
Customers Receiving Financial Help Through Connect for Health Colorado® Seeing a 14% Drop in Net Monthly Premium Cost
DENVER – Coloradans who get financial help buying health insurance through Connect for Health Colorado® are paying an average 14 percent less in “net premium” – what they pay after assistance – compared to the average net premium in 2018, according to data released today.
Three of every four current Connect for Health Colorado customers qualify for financial help to reduce the monthly cost of health insurance. The average net premium for those Coloradans is $117 per month, down from $136 per month last year.
“We are happy that we are able to make health insurance affordable for so many people,” said Kevin Patterson, Chief Executive Office of Connect for Health Colorado. “The number of our customers receiving help rose this year by seven percentage points, to 76 percent, an important increase. We know we have more work to do, and are committed to expanding our impact as we work with policy makers, our stakeholders and our customers throughout the state.
Baker-Polito Administration Announces Health Connector Completes Successful Open Enrollment with Highest-Ever Membership, Covering 282,000 People with Health Insurance
Governor Baker announced today that the Massachusetts Health Connector completed Open Enrollment with the highest membership in the 13-year history of the state’s health insurance exchange, covering 282,000 people with health insurance.
Heh. "13-year history" took a moment to register...but of course Massachusetts has had a health insurance exchange website since 2006, when "RomneyCare" went into effect.
Press Release: NY State of Health Releases 2019 Enrollment Data by Insurer
Mar 12, 2019
New Yorkers Value Choice of Plans
2019 Enrollment is Spread Across NY State of Health’s 12 Qualified Health Plan Insurers and 16 Essential Plan Insurers
ALBANY, N.Y. (March 12, 2019) - NY State of Health, the state’s official health plan Marketplace today released 2019 health plan enrollment by insurer. Twelve insurers offer Qualified Health Plans (QHP) and sixteen insurers offer the Essential Plan (EP) statewide in 2019. Most consumers have a choice of at least four QHP and EP insurers in every county of the state.
“We are pleased to once again offer consumers a broad choice of high-quality, affordable health plan options in every county of the state,” said NY State of Health Executive Director, Donna Frescatore. “And the wide distribution of enrollment across insurers shows us that consumers value this choice.”
The Washington Health Benefit Exchange today announced that more than 200,000 people purchased their 2019 health insurance coverage through Washington Healthplanfinder, the state’s online health insurance marketplace, during the most recent open enrollment period held Nov. 1 through Dec. 15 of last year.
Even with the four percent decrease in total number of enrollments reported from February of 2018, the Exchange saw more than 90 percent of those who selected a 2019 health plan during the open enrollment period make their initial premium payment.
A 4% drop may sound bad, but total QHP selections during OE6 were actually down 8.3% year over year (from 243K to 223K), so this is actually an improvement in that sense. 90.5% of those who selected policies are still effectuated as of February this year vs. 86.4% as of February in 2018.
Vermont is among the few states which also releases their off-exchange numbers, and it's a good thing they do that because it helps explain the 12.3% drop in on-exchange enrollment this year. In short, thanks to VT making the move to active #SilverSwitching for 2019, several thousand people moved from on-exchange Silver ACA plans to nearly-identical off-exchange Silver plans.
Anyway, today they issued a formal press release with additional details...and at the same time bumped up the official enrollment tally by a bit:
2019 Individual Enrollment Report Shows More Vermonters are Covered