UPDATE: On the down side, I was off by 4% this time around.
On the up side, I UNDERESTIMATED:
Actual Feb. enrollments: 942,833, for a total of 4,242,325 thru 3/01/14.
Sarah Kliff at Vox just announced that the February HHS report is expected to be released today at around 4:00pm. A few items in anticipation of that:
As I've noted several times, I'm projecting the report to total around 902,000 exchange-based private QHP enrollments for the month of February (technically 2/02 - 3/01)
If accurate, this would bring the cumulative total of exchange-based private QHP enrollments to 4.202 million (from 10/1/13 - 3/01/14)
From the data I have, the average daily enrollment rate in February was almost identical to that of January, which had about 1.146 million QHP enrollments. HOWEVER, the January report included five weeks of data (12/28 - 2/01), while the February report will only include four weeks (2/02 - 3/01). Therefore, even at the same daily average, it'll be about 20% lower no matter what.
Don't be surprised if Peter Lee of CoveredCA decides to steal some thunder by announcing that California has enrolled 1,000,000 QHPs all by itself either today or tomorrow. However, that would include the past 10 days, while the HHS number will only run thru 3/01.
If you want to get REALLY specific, call it 902,800 and 4,202,292.
I've been dead-on target 6 times in a row without hyping up my projections beforehand. This time I am hyping myself up beforehand, so I'll probably be way off...but as long as I've UNDERestimated the tally, I'll be perfectly fine with that...
The report will be released in about 5 minutes, but my kid gets home from school in about 10, so it'll be a good 20 minutes before I can really post anything. Feel free to follow Sarah Kliff of Vox in the meantime!
Vermont continues to have impressive enrollment numbers (relative to their population size) despite their ongoing technical problems, partly due to an aggressive SHOP/Small Business enrollment program. Private QHPs have somehow more than doubled from 13,514 paid / 3,392 unpaid as of 2/10 up to 28,486 paid / 4,805 unpaid as of February 25th.
Meanwhile, the SHOP enrollment numbers are also impressive, jumping from 29,200 at the beginning of the year up to 40,000 as of 2/25.
In addition, the article claims that the 28.4K figure only represents policies, not people, which suggests that the actual number of individuals could be as many as 51,200, but I'm already finding it difficult to believe that they've managed to go from 13.5K to 28.4K in just 2 weeks in the first place, so I'm holding off on that factor for now.
The latest figures from the Department of Vermont Health Access, presented to lawmakers Wednesday, show 33,291 individuals have selected a plan and 28,486 are fully enrolled...
Until now, aside from the official monthly HHS reports, Vermont's enrollment data has been frustrating--not that it hasn't been available, it's just been released in confusing dollops (Massachusetts falls into the same category). Today, however, the Vermont Health Connect exchange released a detailed PDF that does a great job of answering the key questions--along with one bit of data I haven't seen for any other state so far: The breakdown not only of total Private QHP enrollments, but how many of these started in January, February and (upcoming) March.
Page 6 has the key data: A total of 16,906 QHP enrollees as of 2/10, of whom 13,514 are paid up. Overall, this points to an 80% paid rate, which is very good--but the monthly breakout is even more interesting: January-start enrollees have a 92% paid rate (which you'd certainly hope for by now, considering that we're into mid-February) and February-start enrollees are at 79% paid. The March-start enrollees (14%) are the ones providing the main drag on the total...but this is hardly shocking since the start date for that coverage is still over 2 weeks away.
The Vermont numbers have been alternately impressive and confusing at the same time. The wording of a prior article from 12/12 made it sound like the 45,000 (at the time) people were split between private enrollments and Medicaid expansion, but also made reference to 29,200 people being enrolled "directly via their employer". At the time, I wasn't sure what to do with that number, so I ignored it. However, the more recent article again references the same 29,200 people; after comparing the 2 articles, it seems pretty clear to me that these would fall under the category of "direct" or "off-exchange" enrollees (although they also might fit under "small business exchange enrollments", which is a category I haven't even added yet). Add this to the 22,800 private exchange enrollments and you have 52K total.
The article is a bit confusing, but it looks like 15,800 belong in the "Private Exchange" category with another 29,200 under the "Small Business (Direct)" category which doesn't even exist on the spreadsheet yet. I'll have to review this further to get a straight answer, but for now I'm entering both numbers under the "Private Exchange" heading.
The delayed deluge of applications — 5,000 were filled out in the past four days — brings the total number of Vermonters who should be settled with their coverage at the start of 2014 to 45,000, the administration says.
That’s roughly two-thirds of the 65,000 Vermonters whose insurance expires at the start of the year. Another 9,300 people have three months worth of breathing room — their plans have been extended through March 31, either because their employers chose that route or because the payment piece of the website isn’t working for them.
Of the 45,000 Vermonters who’ve signed up, 29,200 are people whose employers that decided to bypass the website and sign up directly with an insurance carrier. The remainder signed up either through the Vermont Health Connect portal or by filling out a paper application.
Vermont continues to have impressive enrollment numbers (relative to their population size) despite their ongoing technical problems, partly due to an aggressive SHOP/Small Business enrollment program. Private QHPs have somehow more than doubled from 13,514 paid / 3,392 unpaid as of 2/10 up to 28,486 paid / 4,805 unpaid as of February 25th.
