OE7

Mississippi once again has two carriers offering ACA-compliant individual market coverage in 2021 and six on the small group market. Unfortunately, few filing forms don't seem to be available and the ones which are are redacted, so I can't run weighted averages for either.

The unweighted average rate increases are 2.7% on the individual market and basically flat for small group plans.

This actually came out last week but I didn't have a chance to do a write-up on it until now:

July 23, 2020 - Early 2020 Effectuated Enrollment Snapshot

This report provides effectuated enrollment, premium, and advance payments of the premium tax credit (APTC) data for the Federally-facilitated and State-based Exchanges (“the Exchanges”) for February 2020 and for the 2019 plan year.

February 2020 Effectuated Enrollment Snapshot Key Findings

So far, only 8 states (+DC) have released their preliminary 2020 ACA-compliant individual market premium rate filings. So what's the deal with the other 42 states? Well, here's a handy 2020 Submission Deadline table from SERFF (the System for Electronic Rates & Forms Filing, a database maintained by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners).

However, it's a bit overly cumbersome: It stretches out over 5 full pages, and includes columns for Standalone Dental Plans as well as a bunch of info regarding the Small Group Market.

To that end, I've cleaned up/simplified the 2021 Submission Deadline table considerably to only include the individual and small group market dates. I'll be perfectly honest: I'm not quite sure what the distinction is between the "Form/Rate Filings" and the "Binder Deadlines", but the dates tend to match up pretty closely, so I've included all of them below.

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, normally I would've been all over the official CMS 2020 Open Enrollment Period report the moment it was released. It cuts to the core of what I've done here at ACA Signups for the past seven years: Detailed demographic breakouts of everyone who enrolled in on-exchange ACA market policies during the Open Enrollment Period.

Instead, this year I've kind of put it to the side for obvious reasons. With the COVID-19 pandemic having killed over 37,000 Americans and with well over 710,000 total cases to date, it's hard to get too focused on this particular report. Besides, as I noted before, the national enrollment numbers (overall) are almost identical to last year anyway: Just 35,000 fewer people than during the 2019 OEP.

I noted this a couple of weeks ago, but I'm updating this post because the official CMS 2020 Open Enrollment Period report has just been released, so I have final numbers for every state now.

Normally this would be a big, wonky, in-depth analysis, but I'm gonna keep it relatively basic this year for two reasons: First, because the final numbers are only slightly different from what I had them at already (seriously, I was only off by around 5,300 enrollees out of over 11.4 million total); second, because with the COVID-19 pandemic having killed well over 5,000 Americans already with no end in sight, I'm not sure anyone really gives a crap at the moment.

Back in early January I noted that the DC Health Link had reported having 18,611 people enrolled in ACA individual market policies as of January 5th. DC's official deadline wasn't until January 31st, however, and even then they bumped it out by an additional five days (thru January 5th).

Unfortunately, they haven't issued an official final enrollment report yet, but I've been able to get the top-line numbers from an audio recording of their monthly executive board meeting on February 12th:

If you read through the transcript carefully, it boils down to this:

This Just In from the NY State of Health ACA exchange:

Press Release: NY State of Health Announces Record High Enrollment More than 4.9 Million New Yorkers Enrolled

• One in four New Yorkers enrolled through NY State of Health
• Enrollment through the Marketplace increased by over 150,000 from last year

ALBANY, N.Y. (February 20, 2020) - NY State of Health, the state’s official health plan Marketplace, today announced that over 4.9 million people, more than one in four New Yorkers, signed up for health coverage through NY State of Health during this year’s Open Enrollment Period. With an increase of 150,000 people over 2019, enrollment is at a record level, including more than 1 million people enrolled in Qualified Health Plans and the Essential Plan. Marketplace enrollment growth is consistent with New York’s declining uninsured rate, which reached a historic low of 4.7 percent. Open Enrollment ran from November 1, 2019, through February 7, 2020.

UPDATE 2/24/20: California and New York have come out with their final, official enrollment numbers, as have Vermont,Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, although the latter three are estimates on my part due to the way they're reporting their enrollment data:

via HealthSource RI (email):

Press Release: HealthSource RI sees another successful Open Enrollment with lower plan rates for 2020

• State’s critical market stability initiatives drive decrease in cost for those without financial help

• Rhode Island is already seeing the effects of market stability initiatives proposed by Governor Raimondo and enacted by the General Assembly in 2019.
• HealthSource RI’s competitive marketplace offered the 2nd lowest-cost benchmark plan nationwide for 2020.
• The average monthly cost of a health insurance plan without financial help went down from $441.91 in 2019 to $435.60 in 2020.
• HealthSource RI’s individual and family enrollments increased this Open Enrollment, with 32,704 customers enrolled and paid compared to 32,486 last year.
• The marketplace saw over 7,000 new enrollees including strong enrollment from the key “young adult” demographic. Nearly 43% of new 2020 customers were “young invincibles” age 18-34, up from 29% percent in HealthSource RI’s renewing population.
• HealthSource RI customers took advantage of new customer service tools, including a new webchat service and a search tool that lists which prescription medications are covered by each health insurance plan.

During the 2019 Open Enrollment Period, Vermont enrolled 25,223 people in on-exchange ACA individual market policies.

Just today, the state's ACA exchange, Vermont Health Connect, released a breakout of their January 2020 individual and small group market enrollment data as compared with January 2019.​​​​​​

The total number of Individual Market enrollees is 33,982 enrollees as of the end of January. It's important to understand that this is not the same as the number of people who enrolled on the ACA exchange during Open Enrollment, for two reasons: First, 2020 OEP in Vermont ended on December 15th, 2019; this data is as of January 31st. Second, the tables below include both on- and off-exchange enrollees, as opposed to on-exchange only.