Oregon

OK, this was an unexpected update:

Here's which health insurers lost or gained market share in Oregon this year

The numbers are in: It appears that Oregon consumers were fairly price sensitive when it came to choosing health plans this year.

LifeWise had the lowest rates, at $222 a month for a 40-year-old Portlander on a silver plan. Probably not coincidentally, it more than doubled its individual membership in plans that comply with Affordable Care Act guidelines.

As of March 31, LifeWise has nearly 37,000 members in ACA-compliant plans, up from 4,735 last year, according to the Oregon Insurance Division.

The article goes on to tally every single one of Oregon's individual policy QHP enrollees. The bad news is that they don't break them out by exchange vs. off-exchange. The good news is that they specifically clarify that these are all ACA compliant policies (ie, no "grandfathered" or "transitional" numbers included):

Since the 2015 Open Enrollment Period began, in addition to the weekly HC.gov "snapshot" reports which gave state-by-state breakouts of exchange-based private policy enrollments, the Oregon Insurance Division has also been tracking and reporting the number at their site...along with off-exchange (direct) QHP policies. As the only state reporting the off-exchange data on a regular basis, OR has become the only hard source I have for this number (other states like Washington, Florida and Louisiana report off-exchange data as well, but only on a quarterly or annual basis).

Their exchange-based data has always lagged slightly behind the HC.gov number, partly because the thru-dates don't match up and partly because at least one of the insurance companies in Oregon only reports paid enrollments instead of plans selected. Still, with the final week or two of HC.gov data missing at the moment, this is a handy estimate of how things played out in the final "overtime" enrollment week:

Members enrolled,
Nov. 15-Feb. 22
On Healthcare.gov 113,219
Outside of Healthcare.gov 102,232

Total 215,451​

This isn't an exact apples-to-apples comparison, since the Massachusetts number includes the "overtime" extension period while the other 5 states only run through 2/15/15, but I thought it would be useful to see how the 6 exchanges which had widespread technical issues last year fared this time around. Obviously  other states like Washington and California had some snafus, but these are the ones which were seriously hosed last year to the point of requiring massive overhauls or which were completely scrapped in favor of a new platform (I'm not including HC.gov itself here since everyone already knows what massive technical improvements they've made).

The chart below refers specifically to QHP selections only (whether paid or not), and compares the 2015 open enrollment period (11/15/14 - 2/15/15...or 2/26 in the case of MA) against the 2014 open enrollment period (10/1/13 - 4/19/14). I've also included some notes for context.

As noted earlier, there's a lag between the exchange-based QHP data from HC.gov vs. the Oregon Insurance Division, so you can ignore that number. However, the off-exchange number should be accurate (and this is the official source for it anyway):

Members enrolled,
Nov. 15-Feb. 1
On Healthcare.gov 86,606
Outside of Healthcare.gov 95,859
Total 182,465

Last week the off-exchange total was 92,872, so that's about a 3,000 enrollee increase, for whatever that's worth.

According to the HC.gov weekly snapshot report, as of 2 days earlier (1/30), Oregon's exchange-based total was 94,126...slightly less than the off-exchange number. It'll be interesting to see if that ratio holds steady next week after the final deadline surge goes through.

As I noted a week or so ago, there's a slight discrepancy between Healthcare.Gov's ON-exchange QHP tally for Oregon (currently 92,059 as of 1/23) and the state insurance division's record (85,912 through 1/25). This turns out to be due to a combination of lag time between HC.gov recording new enrollments & the state insurance dept. receiving them, plus the fact that one of the companies is only reporting paid enrollees, not total, which skews the numbers. As such, I'm using HC.gov's data for the on-exchange QHPs.

However, for off-exchange QHPs, the only source is the Oregon Dept. of Insurance, and this has gone up a couple thousand people over the past week or so:

The Insurance Division will collect enrollment information from carriers each week throughout 2015 open enrollment. Updated numbers will be posted each week on this web page.

Members enrolled,
Nov. 15-Jan. 25
On Healthcare.gov 85,912
Outside of Healthcare.gov 92,872
Total 178,784

A few days ago, I posted an article over at healthinsurance.org which delved into the mysterious world of OFF-exchange QHPs...ie, people who just enroll in a private, individual/family healthcare policy the old-fashioned way, by contacting Blue Cross, Aetna, UnitedHealthCare or whoever directly instead of going through one of the ACA exchange websites.

I also posted an accompanying piece here which noted how hard it is to lock down these enrollment numbers, since the carriers aren't generally required to provide that information publicly except in a general sort of way (and even then, usually only once a year or so). Only Oregon and Washington State really post off-exchange data with any sort of frequency, and only Oregon is doing so weekly.

Updating Oregon's QHP total does nothing to change the overall tally this year because they're operating on HC.gov now. It is useful to keep a running total on the state, however. In addition, Oregon is the only state (so far) providing hard numbers for off-exchange QHP enrollments.

Members enrolled, Nov. 15-Jan. 4

  • On Healthcare.gov 81,037
  • Outside of Healthcare.gov 62,678
  • Total 143,715

About the data: Enrolled means a person has selected a plan. Consumers must pay the first month's premium for their coverage to become effective. These numbers do not identify whether the first month's premium has been paid. These numbers do not include Oregonians enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid).

As I've noted before, updating Oregon's QHP total does nothing to change the overall tally this year because they're operating on HC.gov now. It is useful to keep a running total on the state, however, given the mess from last year that they're comparing against. In addition, Oregon is the only state (so far) providing hard numbers for off-exchange QHP enrollments.

As I also noted a week or so ago, however, there's an odd discrepancy between the OR state website (which claimed just 67.4K QHPs through 11/21) and the HHS Dept. report (which claimed QHP selections were alredy at over 73K 6 days earlier, on the 15th). With that in mind, use tonight's update with caution:

Open enrollment weekly updates

The Insurance Division will collect enrollment information from carriers each week throughout 2015 open enrollment. Updated numbers will be posted each week on this web page.

Members enrolled,
Nov. 15-Dec. 28
On Healthcare.gov 75,740

Outside of Healthcare.gov 40,731
Total 116,471

A few days ago, I reported that Oregon had only enrolled 40,581 people in private 2015 policies via Healthcare.Gov as of December 14th. I further speculated that even if you include the big Deadline Spike on the 15th, the grand total for OR was likely around 48,000 total in time for January coverage...and of those, the odds are that around 8K of them are new enrollees, leaving around 40K manual renewals from this year.

At my last count, there were around 77K people still enrolled in 2014 plans as of late October, so that leaves potentially 37K people who will miss the boat for January coverage (at least with tax credits...they can still enroll off-exchange without credits, and almost 27K have done so in the state so far).

Many of those 37K may have dropped off of the exchange voluntarily, due to switching to employer-sponsored coverage, aging into Medicare and so on, while others who don't qualify for tax credits anyway may have gone off-exchange instead this year.

However, politically/image-wise, there are still thousands of people who qualify for tax credits who probably missed the deadline.

Open enrollment weekly updates

The Insurance Division will collect enrollment information from carriers each week throughout 2015 open enrollment. Updated numbers will be posted each week on this web page.

Members enrolled,

  • Nov. 15-Dec. 14
  • On Healthcare.gov 40,581
  • Outside of Healthcare.gov 26,799
  • Total 67,380​

About the data: Enrolled means a person has selected a plan. Consumers must pay the first month's premium for their coverage to become effective. These numbers do not identify whether the first month's premium has been paid. These numbers do not include Oregonians enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid).

This updated from Oregon doesn't increase the total on the spreadsheet or graph, because it's already included in the HC.gov reports, but it's important for other reasons, including:

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