Oregon

Oregon continues to slog it's way through enrollments in spite of their technical problems...

April 10, 2014
Update: Private coverage and Oregon Health Plan enrollment through Cover Oregon

Medical enrollments through Cover Oregon: 217,413
Total private medical insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon 1: 63,325 

Oregon Health Plan enrollments through Cover Oregon: 154,088

Net private medical:  59,923

Oregon's Medicaid figure hasn't changed, but the exchange QHP tally is now up to an unspecific 59K (assuming this is as of yesterday):

Cruse said he became a full-fledged enrollee on a Moda plan in February. He’s now one of 59,000 people in Oregon who enrolled in private insurance after successfully navigating through the often cumbersome Cover Oregon process. Another 140,000 enrolled through the site on the Oregon Health Plan. 

UPDATE: OK, scratch that. Looks like this article was quoting the 58,833 "total" QHP figure from the most recent official press release instead of the "net" figure which was exactly 3K less: 55,833.

Leaving this up since it's already posted but sorry about the mixup.

Oregon appears to be purging their old unpaid enrollments, for cleaner totals (along with the dental enrollments, which even I haven't really talked about)...I'm assuming this is through yesterday. Note that the Medicaid number doesn't include an additional 128K enrolled via their "Fast Track" program from earlier:

April 3, 2014 Update: Private coverage and Oregon Health Plan enrollment through Cover Oregon

  • Medical enrollments through Cover Oregon: 200,165
  • Total private medical insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon 1: 58,833                      
  • Oregon Health Plan enrollments through Cover Oregon: 141,332
  • Total private dental insurance enrollments through CoverOregon 1: 12,066                       

Net enrollments 

  • Net private medical:  55,833
  • Net private dental: 11,208

Background: With three months of open enrollment completed, Cover Oregon is expanding the enrollment report beyond what is required by the federal Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight to include net private insurance enrollments and also dental enrollments. 

Van Pelt highlights the more than 300,000 "enrolled in health care coverage since October thanks to Cover Oregon ... and the Oregon Health Authority."

That figure includes:

  • 55,000 people enrolled in private plans using the backup manual processing system set up to cope with the exchange's technology issues.
  • more than 120,000 people enrolled into Oregon Health Plan after the exchange forwarded their information to the state for processing, a workaround for the exchange's broken Medicaid interface.
  • 125,000 people enrolled directly into the Oregon Health Plan using a streamlined system set up to bypass Cover Oregon.

OK, in addition to the appx. 7.041 million enrollments on the Federal exchange (HC.gov), I've brought CO, CT, DC, HI, KY, MD, MN, NY, RI and WA completely up to date, with all QHP data through midnight on 3/31 (some of the Medicaid/CHIP data is still missing, but that's a lesser concern at the moment).

However, I'm still missing the following exchange QHP data:

  • California: 22 hours (that's right...the current tally runs thru 2am on 3/31)
  • Massachusetts: 3 days (current is thru 3/28)
  • Nevada: 2 days (current is thru 3/29)
  • Oregon: 3 days (current is thru 3/28)
  • Vermont: 1 day (current is thru 3/30)

I can't tell you how frustrating it is to be this close to full data while still missing it.

So, how much is actually missing? Well, if these states were running at their prior average March daily rate, it would be

  • CA: 11,754
  • MA: 512 x 3 = 1,536
  • NV: 427 x 2 = 854
  • OR: 502 x 3 = 1,506
  • VT: 775
  • Total: 16,425

However, this obviously doesn't apply since the final weekend and especially yesterday were insane.

Another quick update from Oregon; at this point I'm pretty sure that the "Net" QHP number (which removes "terminations & cancellations") is the same as Connecticut--purging the tally of non-payments, adding Oregon to the 100% Paid column:

Medical enrollments through Cover Oregon: 178,057

Total private medical insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon 1: 55,177 

Oregon Health Plan enrollments through Cover Oregon: 122,880

Net enrollments: Net private medical: 52,372

This brings Oregon's exchange QHPs up from 50,137 just 3 days earlier, or 2,235...745/day. Compare this with an average of 179/day in February (or 472/day for the first 3 weeks of March).

Medicaid enrollments haven't changed in this report.

In spite of their endless technical issues, Oregon is actually kicking serious butt in manually processing a mountain of paper applications. In addition, they're including some interesting extra info in their reports lately--including NET enrollments after cleaning out cancellations/etc (does this mean Oregon is now only including paid enrollments, then, like MA and WA??), as well as dental enrollments, which haven't gotten much attention from anyone:

Medical enrollments through Cover Oregon: 175,534
Total private medical insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon1: 52,654                       

Oregon Health Plan enrollments through Cover Oregon: 122,880

Dental enrollments 
Total private dental insurance enrollments through CoverOregon 1: 10,628                       

Net enrollments 
Net private medical2:  50,137
Net private dental 2: 9,877

OK, the cutesy title is kind of a misnomer; my two previous entries didn't use that title originally...but they should have, and do now.

March 31st is supposed to be the final day to enroll in QHPs via the exchanges...but it's looking more and more as though that won't quite be the case in not two, not three...but possibly up to seven states now, including a couple whose websites have been working smooth as silk??

On March 7th I pointed out that due to Massachusetts having some 154,000 people stuck in health insurance limbo, they've been granted some sort of temporary extension, twice...out to as far as June 30th in some cases...

Cover Oregon just posted an unexpected update (wasn't expecting this until tomorrow). They've added a couple of very interesting new features this week: First, they've started including dental policies, which has been pretty much ignored by everyone (including myself). I think Kentucky is the only other state that I've seen call any attention to the dental plans.

Of more interest to me for this site, however, is the fact that they've added net enrollments, explaining that these are the final number after people have "cancelled or terminated" their accounts. They don't specify the reasons for these terminations/cancellations (is it by the customer due to a change in status? is it by the exchange or insurance company for nonpayment?), but it's still a good thing overall as it helps give a truer picture of the situation.

A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that at least two states, Massachusetts and Oregon, may end up extending their enrollment period beyond the official March 31st "deadline" due to their exchange websites still being partially or completely hosed.

In Massachusetts' case, there's about 219,000 people currently stuck in coverage limbo; the HHS Dept. has granted an extension of some sort to as far out as June 30th to get these people squared away, although I'm pretty sure the extension only applies to those folks, not anyone who's just trying to enroll now...but that's still a hell of a lot of people.

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