Oregon: 26.7% Private QHP jump since 1/14; major correction re. Medicaid/CHIP

A very nice bump in Oregon's numbers today, especially given their ongoing technical issues. Private QHP enrollments are up from 23,800 as of Jan. 15 to 30,157 as of Jan. 24. However, since yesterday's HHS Dept. announcement of appx. 3 million total enrollments was "as of this week", this doesn't impact the overall total; it simply subtracts about 6,000 from the "Unspecified" number. Expect a lot of this over the next week or two until the enrollment updates "clear" the Week 16 point.

Unfortunately, I made a bit of an error on my "households vs. individuals" Medicaid calculations the other day. Upon closer inspection of the CMS footnotes, it looks like the "Fast Track" enrollments are for individuals already, while the other direct enrollments (totalling 51,410 from Oct. 1 - Dec. 31) are households. Multiplying those by 1.8 gives us 92,538 plus the 120,155 Fast Track enrollments. Then we need to add another 1,035 to account for the most recent Jan. 24 update. Then, of course, there's the 9,886 additional exchange-based Medicaid enrollments since 1/14 (from 43,132 to 53,018).

After all this reshuffling, the grand total for Oregon's Medicaid/CHIP now comes to 266,746. While in real terms this represents an almost 11,000 increase over the 1/14 total, it's actually 85,000 less than what I had before due to my inadvertantly counting the Fast Track enrollments as households instead of individuals. Sorry about the error.

Oregonians continue to enroll in health insurance in 2014 despite difficulties with Cover Oregon. According to the state's latest numbers, more than 30,000 people have signed up for private insurance through the health exchange, and more than 170,000 have signed up for the Medicaid-funded Oregon Health Plan...

More than 120,000 of the Oregon Health Plan enrollees didn't use the exchange at all, but a streamlined process established by state officials in August to bypass the exchange entirely. 

January 24, 2014: Cover Oregon

Private insurance: 30,157
Oregon Health Plan: 53,018
 
Oregon Health Authority “Fast Track”: Oregon Health Plan: 121,190