HealthSource RI enrollment far exceeds projections
Updated Dec 22, 2017 at 7:48 PM
More than 30,700 have already signed up, and hours at the walk-in and call centers have been extended in anticipation of a surge in enrollments leading up to the Dec. 31 deadline.
PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island has outpaced projected sign-ups for Obamacare next year with more than 30,700 residents now enrolled in health insurance through the state-based health insurance exchange.
HealthSource RI officials expected to see around 30,000 people in total enrolled by the end of December. With a little more than a week to go and the last days of open enrollment typically the busiest, numbers are sure to increase.
At week six of Open Enrollment nearly 29,000 Rhode Islanders have enrolled in coverage, which is about five percent more than last year. HealthSource RI continues to see an increase in new customers. We have more than three times the number of new enrollees this Open Enrollment period compared to the previous. HealthSource RI is pleased to see an increase in customers age 18-34, often known as “young invincibles.” While 25 percent of our renewing customers are age 18-34, 34 percent of our new customers fall into this age group.
Rhode Island is a tiny state, of course, so this doesn't necessarily mean much nationally, but it's great news across the board nonetheless.
According to the CMS Public Use File, Rhode Island's official tally as of 12/10/16 was 27,555 enrollees; 29,000 is indeed 5.2% higher. In fact, they only need 500 more people to beat their OE4 numbers, though they'd have to add another 5,700 to reach the all-time Rhode Island record of 34,670 set in OE3.
In Rhode Island, enrollment this year is five times higher in the first week than it was last year, said Zach Sherman, the director of HealthSource R.I. An early outreach campaign by the state seems to have paid off with more than 500 people enrolling, compared to 109 people in the first week last year.
I've received a hard number direct from the exchange: It's actually 604 new enrollees through 11/07, versus 126 new enrollees in the first 7 days last year.
I first looked at Rhode Island's proposed rate hikes back in early July. At the time, the average increase for the two carriers participating in RI's individual market was 10.5% assuming CSR reimbursement payments are guaranteed for 2018. If they weren't guaranteed, however, I estimated at the time that an additional 19 percentage points would be added into the mix, based on an estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
However, I realized a little later on that I was misinterpreting KFF's analysis; they were referring to how much they estimated silver plans would go up due to the lost CSR funds, not all metal levels. Furthermore, for Medicaid expansion states (which includes Rhode Island) they estimated the average was only 15%.. Based on these factors, the impact across the board on Rhode Island should have only been around 10.3%.
Rhode Island just released their 2018 Individual and Small Group market rate hike requests, and they're pretty straightforward. For the small group market, I don't have the weighted market share for each carrier, but overall it ranges from 5.8 - 12.8%, with an unweighted average of 8.8%.
On the individual market, as with 2017, there's only two carriers participating in 2018: BCBS of RI and Neighborhood Health Plan. They're asking for a 13.8% and 5.0% increase respectively, with a weighted average of 10.5%.
BCBS gave their enrollment as around 27,000; for Neighborhood, I estimated theirs based on dividing their projected total member months by 12 to get 16,345. RI's on-exchange enrolment was 29,456 during Open Enrollment this year, so that would leave roughly 12,800 off-exhange enrollees, for roughly a 2:1 on/off-exchange ratio, which sounds about right.
Oof. Regular readers know that I've compiled plenty of evidence showing that while the 39 states run through the federal exchange (HC.gov) showed a ~5% enrollment drop this year, the state exchanges have been showing an overall net increase of roughly 2% over 2016. Rhode Island, however, is the odd man out on this front, as shown in this email I just received (not up on their website yet):
Despite facing a unique set of challenges this open enrollment, 29,420 individuals selected 2017 coverage through HealthSource RI during open enrollment period (November 1, 2016 – January 31, 2017). As of January 31, 27,395 of those individuals paid, and are therefore confirmed, in 2017 coverage. We do anticipate these number will change as payments are made through the February 23 payment deadline and also as HealthSource RI remedies account issues incurred during the open enrollment period. It is difficult to point to one clear cause for this year-over-year drop in enrollment, but we believe several factors might have played a role:
As i noted last week, with all renewing enrollees accounted for, Rhode Island's ACA exchange is likely to come up short not only of my pre-election projection (40,000 enrollees), but will likely see a drop from last year's 34,670 QHP selections. They had only hit 29,312 QHPs as of Christmas Eve, and have only tacked on another 580 people since then:
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT • As of December 31, 2016
Rhode Island is one of three states (along with Washington and Massachusetts) which allowed people to enroll for January coverage as late as December 23rd. RI's numbers have also included auto-renewals for some time now, so today's report includes everyone whose 2017 policies will kick off effective this Sunday, January 1st:
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT • As of December 24, 2016
Last week, the Rhode Island exchange reported 27,555 QHP enrollees as of 12/10, a tiny increase over the prior week mainly due to auto-renewed enrollees dropping out, cancelling out most of the increase.
Rhode Island is one of 3 states which are still taking enrollments for January, but they've released another report (thorugh 12/17) which brings the tally up to
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 17, 2016
