Connecticut: Final 2019 Open Enrollment Total: 111K QHPs; over 10K added thanks to extra month

Livetweets from the Access Health CT monthly board meeting. It's important to note that the Connecticut ACA exchange originally was going to stick with the "official" 2019 Open Enrollment deadline of December 15th, but after the horribly-timed judicial ruling in the #TexasFoldEm federal lawsuit, decided to bump their 2019 enrollment deadline out by an extra month after all:

OVERVIEW: We ended #OpenEnrollment with 111,066 Active 2019 Enrollees. Of those, 71% qualified for premium tax credits.#AHCTBoDMeeting #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

Last year, AccessHealthCT reported 114,134 QHP selections, so they're ending 2019 Open Enrollment around 2.7% short of that. This isn't too bad, and still beats the 3.6% drop on the federal exchange.

They're also providing a lot of other handy demographic data:

UPDATE: 4,081 enrollees changed plans during the extension and 10,059 customers enrolled for coverage starting in February.#AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

CT is a good case study of how effective it is to extend the deadline, since no one had any idea they were going to do so until the last minute. Around 100,000 enrolled before 12/15, and another 10,000 afterwards. Is it "worth" the extra time/effort to pull in 10% as many people in the extra month? That depends on your point of view. Keep in mind that the primary goal of the ACA exchanges is not to "make a profit" but to get as many people covered as possible.

Remember, the main point of the deadline is to help prevent people from gaming the system (thus causing adverse selection problems resulting in premiums shooting sky-high)...as well as to incentivize people to get off their butts and actually enroll, since deadlines are proven to be pretty effective.

OVERVIEW: 80,812 Enrollees Renewed 2018 policies for 2019 with #AHCT. #AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

OVERVIEW: 30,254 New QHP Enrollees were added. Of those, over 9.6k are First Time Customers. #AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

Reasons behind 2019 Open Enrollment Attrition, resulting in 14,981 non-renewals:
Enrolled in HUSKY - 31%
Automatically Termed - 14%
Medicare Age Out - 9%
Active Cancellation - 46%#AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

In other words, around 40% of those who drop their ACA exchange coverage only do so because they become eligible for Medicaid or Medicare instead.

Lower price 2019 benchmark plans resulted in reductions to premium tax credits. So we responded with a significant increase in customer assistance and decision support. #AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

This is the downside of #SilverLoading: A higher benchmark premium = higher subsidies; lower premiums, ironically, mean a worse deal for many subsidized enrollees.

Our stance was to over-communicate to our customers in order to help them change their shopping habits #ShopCompareEnroll; reduce price shock & confusion; promote informed purchasing & increase customer assistance. #AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

We increased Customer Engagement with 100k direct mail deliveries; 950k+ custom emails; 6 text message waves to more than 25k recipients; over 320 social media posts (63.4k viewed top post) & 3,300 Outbound Calls. #AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

We handled 288k calls; opened 7 enrollment locations with over 3,831 visitors; hosted 11 enrollment fairs serving 1,592 visitors; handled 827 social media interactions & more than 28k live chat sessions. #AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

Over 50k users used our Consumer Decision Support (CDS) tool cost estimation,
doctor search, or prescription search features. #AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

We hired and placed 10 brokers in our call center who assisted over 5k enrollees. As a result, 43% of enrollees worked with brokers (up 8% from 2018).#AHCTBoDMeeting #OpenEnrollment #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019

OVERVIEW: 49,912 Medicaid Enrollees completed applications or redeterminations through the integrated eligibility system during #OpenEnrollment. #AHCTBoDMeeting #CustomerFirst

— Access Health CT (@AccessHealthCT) January 17, 2019