Will the GOP House Energy/Commerce Committee actually follow up on their "How many have PAID??" survey?
The question above is rhetorical, because I already know the answer.
From the original, utterly debunked "Only 67% have paid!" press release:
House Energy and Commerce Committee members sent letters requesting specific enrollment data, including the number of individuals who have paid their first month’s premium and demographic breakdowns. The committee has compiled the data that provides a snapshot of the true enrollment picture as of April 15, 2014, after the official end of the open enrollment period. Due to the administration’s repeated and unilateral extensions and changes, as well as the fact that many insurers have reported that individuals will still have time to pay their first month’s premium, the committee plans to ask the insurers in the federally facilitated marketplace to provide an enrollment update by May 20, 2014.
Well, aside from the fact that no, the original survey results were not even remotely a "true enrollment picture", even as of 4/15, it's now June 12 and there's been no updated report released.
As I noted back on May 27th, now would be a perfectly reasonable time to request payment data from every insurer on the federal and state exchanges (not just half of them like the original GOP survey did). However, as I noted then, any survey would have to follow several guidelines:
- Results from every company on all 16 exchanges covering all 50 states + DC has to be included. None of this half-the-companies-and-we-won't-say-which-ones nonsense.
- The responses from the companies must state how many of their exchange QHP enrollees had paid their 1st month's premium as of the
last weekend of May*. None of this mid-April crap.- Give the actual NUMBER of enrollees paid/total*, not just the percentages.
- The companies should also answer how many of those non-payments are due to their own backlogged or screwed-up billing systems.
- For the companies which operate in more than one state, ask them to break down their paid/unpaid enrollee numbers by state.
*#3 above is even more important now that we're into mid-June, since there's almost certainly been another 300,000+ additional QHP enrollees added since mid-April. I do realize that it could take a couple of weeks to get responses from all 300+ companies, so it's not reasonable to have the data up through today, but 5/31 should be a reasonable thru-date.
Of course, as I said above, I already know the answer to the question. I will be stunned and amazed if the GOP ever bothers following through with this since they know that they aren't gonna like the answer: I'm quite confident that at least 90% of the original 8.02 million exchange QHP enrollees have paid their first premiums (and I'm guessing up to 80% of the 300K+ who've enrolled since then).
I may be shouting at clouds by now, but it'd be nice to see someone do a proper survey of the insurance companies on this. I don't have the resources to do so.