The Washington State ACA exchange released updated 2015 enrollment numbers today, broken out by county, current through January 31st. They've even broken each county out between renewals from 2014 and new additions for 2015. The grand totals?
This press release from the Washington exchange about tax credits for 2014 ACA enrollees isn't an official enrollment update, but they do include a rough update about 2/3 of the way down the text:
As of Jan. 25, more than 127,000 residents have enrolled in Qualified Health Plans for 2015 coverage, with approximately 40,000 of those customers signing up for the first time through Washington Healthplanfinder.
127K is about 10K more than they had enrolled as of January 17, or around 1,250/day. At that rate, they'd be likely to add another 26K by 2/15, for 153K total, which would be far short of the 215K that they're targeting (and way short of the 250K I was anticipating for WA). A decent mid-February surge should bring them up to around 175K, and a full surge could max out at 200K even. It's conceivable that they'll even squeak by their own target, but I don't see any way of reaching my own target.
TODAY, January 15th, is the deadline for anyone who wants to enroll in a private insurance policy for coverage starting on February 1st in most states (or to switch to a different policy if you have one but want to make a change starting in February).
After that, of course, we'll have the big February 15th deadline (for March 1st coverage), which will also be a big deal because it'll be the last chance many (not all) uninsured people have to get coverage before the door slams closed until next fall.
Remember, the penalty in 2016 for not having health insurance in 2015 is considerably higher than it was for 2014: Instead of 1% of your taxable income (or $95/person in your household, whichever is higher), the fee this year is 2% of your income or $325 per person.
Yes, that's right: We're quickly approaching the next big deadline: Private policy enrollment in time for coverage starting on February 1st.
Of the 3 monthly deadlines (January 1st start, February 1st start, March 1st start), this is the one getting the lowest amount of hype, for obvious reasons. The December 15th (or December 18, 23 or later, depending on the state) deadline was a huge deal because millions of people had to be renewed (either actively or automatically) in order to avoid any sort of a coverage gap, while a few million more people new to the exchanges jumped on board in time to start 2015 running. By my estimate, there should have been roughly 8.6 million people whose 2015 policies started on Jan. 1st.
At long last (well, by my standards anyway), the Washington State exchange has released updated enrollment numbers, and the results are...well, kind of all over the place.
First up, of course, is the private QHP enrollment figure:
OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington Healthplanfinder today announced that more than 107,000 residents have signed up or renewed their Qualified Health Plan through wahealthplanfinder.org for coverage that started on Jan. 1. Approximately 26 percent of current Qualified Health Plan enrollees have signed up through Washington Healthplanfinder for the first time.
In addition, 471,602 new adults have accessed coverage through Washington Apple Health (Medicaid). The total number of residents who are currently enrolled under Medicaid expansion and in Qualified Health Plans totals nearly 580,000.
...Currently, 60 percent of customers who were enrolled in 2014 coverage have taken action to renew their coverage for 2015. Any remaining customers must return to their online account or contact the toll-free Customer Support Center to reconfirm their eligibility for financial help, select a health plan and submit their payment.
OK, this is kind of strange...the WA exchange has not posted any press releases since the 23rd, and specifically told me that they don't have any updated numbers since then, but this brief story at KLEW TV is pretty clear about it...and the numbers are about right, since they only include 1 more day of data (the press release went through the 22nd, and the 23rd was the deadline for January coverage in WA):
LEWISTON, ID - We start off with news about healthcare. 101,000 people in Washington State have bought health insurance through the Washington Exchange so far during this open enrollment period.
About 76,000 renewed their policies by the Tuesday deadline for January first coverage. About 25,000 are new to the exchange and will have insurance on the first day of the new year.
The article also gives a solid number for how many current enrollees didn't make the deadline and what their options are:
Washington Healthplanfinder Reminds Residents to Get Enrolled by 5 p.m. Today
Renewing Customers Must Also Take Action to Avoid a Gap in Coverage
OLYMPIA, Wash. – The Washington Health Benefit Exchange is reminding residents today to select and pay for a Qualified Health Plan through www.wahealthplanfinder.org by 5 p.m. for coverage that begins on Jan. 1, 2015. As of yesterday, more than 92,000 residents have enrolled for coverage that starts in 2015, with 22,710 of those customers enrolling for the first time in a Qualified Health Plan.
Interest surrounding the Dec. 23 deadline has been strong with approximately 30,000 calls to the Customer Support Center since Friday, Dec. 19. Nearly 7,000 customers enrolled in a Qualified Health Plan from Friday to Sunday alone.
As you can see from the graphic I posted yesterday (and had to revise several times throughout the day), the official enrollment deadline for private policies starting on January 1st, 2015 has now passed for all 37 states operating via HealthCare.Gov, as well as residents of DC, Hawaii and Kentucky. It's certainly possible that any or all of these will announce some sort of "special circumstances" allowance for those who didn't make the midnight cut-off (10pm in Alaska), but I'm assuming those would be done strictly on a case-by-case basis.
OK, so what about the remaining 11 states?
Well, 4 of them (MD, MA, RI & WA) had later deadlines for January coverage all along: Maryland on 12/18 (Thursday) and the other 3 on 12/23 (next Tuesday).
New York and Idaho bumped their deadlines out from yesterday until 12/20 (Saturday), although Idaho had previously claimed that their deadline was 12/23, but are now claiming that it was originally 12/15. I still don't understand what happened there, but so be it: 12/20 it is for ID.
BOOM, there it is: Washington State has been pretty quiet on the update front, due, no doubt, to having to clean up a rather embarrassing screw-up on the part of their IT systems integrator a week or so ago when over 6,000 account enrollments/payments were accidentally cancelled.
However, I'm very happy to report that not only do they appear to have resolved most of this issue (2/3 of the accounts have been restored so far), but they've released detailed, up-to-date data...and it's pretty damned impressive so far:
Updated enrollment totals are included below:
Qualified Health Plans - New: 10,082
Qualified Health Plan Renewals: 45,843
Total: 55,925
Washington Healthplanfinder Business
Accounts Created: 1,550
Total Completed Applications – Link Sent to Employees: 73
Total Enrollments – Employee Plan Selection Complete: 3
*Note: These numbers reflect QHP enrollments through Dec. 10 and Medicaid Enrollments through Dec. 4.
They also reported on the Medicaid (Apple Health) situation:
