Two quick last-minute updates before the ball drops on 2013:
Rhode Island: private enrollments up to 9,800 (h/t to Betsy Cazden aka rugbymom)
Individuals and families had until the end of the day Tuesday to enroll throughHealthSource RI for coverage beginning Wednesday. About 9,800 people had signed up from Oct. 1 through Dec. 28 for commercial plans offered in the marketplace. It was not immediately clear how many of them were previously uninsured.
As Ms. Cazden notes: "We were at a bit over 5,000 at the end of November, so this means it's almost doubled. Our CBO target number is 12,000, which we're on track to hit by mid-January at this pace....there will be more numbers coming out since people can sign up until midnight tonight (12/31)."
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I've run into my first major data error (to my knowledge) in weeks.
Read the whole blog post for details, but the short version is that I had Minnesota up to 125K total (50K private, 75K public), when it turns out that those numbers should only be 19,420 and 33,759 respectively. It also means that last week's Minnesota numbers were wrong as well.
I've already corrected the spreadsheet; this means the total is 30,580 less than I had it last night.
My apologies for the error...which came on the same day that a White House representative apparently mentioned me by name on MSNBC this morning. Lovely.
Oh, I should note that I know I promised an update to the IA/NE numbers and how this relates to "off-exchange" enrollments, but between the Minnesota correction and the actual paying work that I'm way behind on (you know, my job and all...) that'll have to wait until later today (I hope).
In a conference call earlier today, the HHS announced a few things, most of which I already knew, but a few new items. First, they confirmed the 2.1M private enrollment figure which ACASignups has been projecting for a week now (my original prediction was 2.0M by 12/24 and up to 2.3M by midnight tonight, but that was before several states extended their enrollment deadliens; I changed this to 2.1M who will have their coverage start on January 1st).
They also confirmed the 3.9M Medicaid/CHIP enrollments through 11/30 (not surprising since I had already gotten that number from them anyway) and the 3.1M "Under-26'ers" on their parents plans thanks to the ACA.
To be honest, there wasn't a whole lot of new information given out. The most interesting news is that they've gotten both CVS and Walgreens to agree to some sort of special "transitional phase policy" regarding prescriptions and other pharmacy transcations; the gist of it is that for a short period of time (A week? Two weeks? They didn't specify), you'll be able to get prescriptions filled and so forth from CVS or Walgreens as long as you provide some sort of proof of your insurance coverage, even if it's not in their regular system yet. I didn't catch what sort of proof would be required, but this makes sense and is a smart move under the circumstances.
Last night I teased that I'd be providing some context and insight into the Iowa and Nebraska updates posted on the spreadsheet, and I still plan on doing so later today. However, there's been an interesting development over at Minnesota which I need to address first.
Yesterday, Jackie Crosby of the Minnesota StarTribune posted "MNsure grids for late crush of enrollees", which among other things gave an update on the MNsure enrollment numbers, stating:
More than 53,000 Minnesotans have bought coverage as of last Friday, with the biggest gains coming from those buying private health plans on the individual market. By Friday, 19,420 had signed up for individual or family plans; 12,051 had been enrolled in Medical Assistance; and 12,708 were getting coverage through MinnesotaCare.
So far, fair enough. However, in the original version of the article posted yesterday, there were two more paragraphs immediately following this. The first paragraph specified that these enrollments actually represented about 125,000 actual people (i.e., additional family members, etc). It also specified that about 20,000 of those were being held up due to paperwork issues and so forth. The next paragraph stated that around 3,900 people had completed enrollment but hadn't actually paid their first premiums yet.
Yesterday morning's big news, of course, was that the Federal ACA exchange (covering 36 states) is now up to over 1.1 million private healthcare plan enrollees. Today brings 4 new state-level updates...and a teaser for two others you probably weren't expecting to see.
New York:
Today's big news is in New York,which announced that they're up to a total of 241,522 enrollees in either private plans or Medicaid/SCHIP expansion. They haven't broken out the number yet, but based on the split in the previous update (156K private, 58K Medicaid/SCHIP) I'm going with a 73% private / 27% Medicaid split until more specific info is released. This increases NY's private enrollments to 176K, up 20K from last week. h/t to Buenaventura for being the first to notify me.
Connecticut:
Connecticut issued a formal press release which includes their final 12/23 deadline enrollment tally for 1/1/14 plan coverage. The total is only slightly higher than what I had (34,295 instead of 34,000 even); the noteworthy part of the announcement is that they've confirmed ACASignups.net's declaration of CT as the first state to surpass their original CBO enrollment projection. CBO had them achieving 33,000 private enrollments by 3/31/14; instead they've managed to break through that number in less than half the 6-month enrollment period. Given the poor October performance of the ACA exchanges as a whole, this is an amazing development.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Yesterday morning's big news, of course, was that the Federal ACA exchange (covering 36 states) is now up to over 1.1 million private healthcare plan enrollees. Today brings 4 new state-level updates...and a teaser for two others you probably weren't expecting to see.
New York:
Today's big news is in New York, which announced that they're up to a total of 241,522 enrollees in either private plans or Medicaid/SCHIP expansion. They haven't broken out the number yet, but based on the split in the previous update (156K private, 58K Medicaid/SCHIP) I'm going with a 73% private / 27% Medicaid split until more specific info is released. This increases NY's private enrollments to 176K, up 20K from last week. h/t to Buenaventura for being the first to notify me.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
OK, it wasn't really planning on setting ACASignups.net up as anything more than an embedded Google Spreadsheet, but along with the spike in ACA enrollments over the past 2 weeks has also come a similar spike in website traffic and exposure. Over the past few days, it's been linked to and/or cited by major media outlets including Forbes, New York Magazine and, most notably, the Washington Post, so I figured it was time to expand, organize and tidy up things a bit.
I also wasn't planning on launching the new version of the site until January 1st, but given this morning's announcement that the Federal healthcare exchange (Healthcare.Gov) has topped 1.1 million enrollments--which in turn brings the overall total of private plan enrollments to over 2 million--I decided to go ahead and launch it a bit earlier than expected. (h/t to David S. for the heads up)
OK, exhausted from the frenzy of activity today, but I did want to get one issue cleared up as best as I could. There's a lot of confusion about the "3.1 million young adults on their parents plan" figure which is mentioned on the graph but not referred to in the spreadsheet itself.
The 3.1 Million figure comes from a CNN Money article from June 2012. According to that article, the comparable number a year earlier (June 2011) was 2.5 million, so it's safe to assume that this number has only gone up further in the past 18 months.
There is concern that many young adults (ages 19–29) will remain without health insurance in 2014 despite the Affordable Care Act’s reforms, including subsidized private coverage offered in new state marketplaces and expanded Medicaid eligibility. How things turn out will likely depend on outreach efforts and states’ decisions on expanding Medicaid. Commonwealth Fund Health Insurance Tracking Survey data from 2011 and 2013 show increasing awareness among young adults of the 2010 requirement that health plans cover chil- dren under age 26. Of the estimated 15 million young adults enrolled in a parent’s plan in the prior 12 months, 7.8 million would not likely have been eligible to enroll prior to the law. Still, only 27 percent of 19-to-29-year-olds are aware of the marketplaces. Meanwhile, most uninsured young adults living below poverty will not have access to subsidized public or private insurance in states opting out of the Medicaid expansion.
Given the craziness of the past few days, I haven't had a chance to check into this further, but assuming it checks out, it certainly looks like 7.8 million is the more appropriate number to use. Of course, if I do change it from 3.1 to 7.8 I'll no doubt be accused of making up phantom numbers, so I'll have to double-check before proceeding.
OK, I wasn't really planning on setting this site up as anything more than an embedded Google Spreadsheet, but along with the spike in ACA enrollments over the past 2 weeks has also come a similar spike in website traffic and exposure. Over the past few days, I've been linked to and/or cited by major media outlets including Forbes, New York Magazine and, most notably, the Washington Post, so I figured it was time to organize and tidy up things a bit.
I also wasn't planning on launching the new version of ACASignups.net until January 1st, but given this morning's announcement that the Federal healthcare exchange (Healthcare.Gov) has topped 1.1 million enrollments (h/t to David S. for the heads up!)--which in turn brings the overall total of private plan enrollments to over 2 million--I decided to go ahead and launch it a bit earlier than expected.
So, as you can see, I'm still scrambling to get the new digs ready. I'm separating out the visual enrollment graph from the spreadsheet itself, and will be back-porting my older blog entries from Daily Kos and Eclectablog over here (don't worry, I'll still be cross-posting there as well). I also still have to add the FAQ and other resource links.
Perhaps the most important functional addition, however, is the new Submit an Update form. I have a dozen or so people who have been sending me updates for one state or another until now, but their method of getting it to me has been inconsistent. I hope this new form will give everyone a single place to send the latest state or federal exchange enrollment numbers. Of course, there's always the chance that someone will try and flood me with junk links or vitriol; if that happens I'll have to rethink this feature.
In the meantime, thanks for your interest and support, and keep an eye on the site for more info in the coming days.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
OK, after the insanity of the past few days in terms of both the ever-shifting January enrollment deadline (changing from 12/15 to 12/23 and then 12/24 Federally; ranging from 12/23 to 12/24 to 12/27 to, amazingly, 12/31 for some of the State exchanges) as well as on a personal level (Forbes, the Washington Post and NY Magazine are now citing ACASignups.net as a trusted source), actual updates to the enrollment tally have actually been kind of quiet the past day or so.
The numbers were spiking so rapidly in the days leading up to Christmas Eve that it's a bit odd to see such a dearth of new data since then.
HOWEVER, there have been 3 updates since then which may seem pretty minor on the surface, but which speak volumes about what's actually happening nationally.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Yesterday was, as predicted, rather chaotic on the ACASignups.net front. This morning, the fun continues with a few more last-minute updates. Also, I made my "final" predictions late last night...which I'm now scrapping in favor of a different type of "final" prediction (see below for more on this).
Enrollments in private health plans on Healthplanfinder, the state’s online insurance marketplace, surged past 65,000 as applicants hustled to beat the Monday night deadline for coverage beginning Jan. 1, Washington Health Benefit Exchange officials reported Tuesday.
Then it was "OK, the site is loading but no one can create an account!"
Then "OK, you can create an account but no one can view the plans!"
Then "OK, you can view the plans but no one can fill out their application!"
Then "OK, you can apply but no one can actually enroll!"
Then "OK, it works now, but no one bothering to do so anymore!"
Then "OK, (a lot of) people are enrolling, but none of the data is being transferred to the insurance companies!"
And now that we've hit over 1.8 million private enrollments, the new attack is:
"FINE, a lot of people have ENROLLED, but how many have actually *PAID*???"
Here's a simple 2 part response:
1. Actually, Washington State DOES break enrollments out between "enrolled but not paid" and "enrolled and paid". In their case, about 48% of their 134,000 private plan enrollees have fully paid. Assuming this is a typical spread across the other states, it should be roughly 875,000 enrollees who have paid already.
Good evening! If you started an application December 23, but haven't completed it, you now have until Friday, December 27 at 8pm to finish for coverage starting on January 1. However, you cannot complete your application online as part of this extension. Instead, please call our service center at 1-800-300-1506, or work with a Certified Enrollment Counselor or Agent - you can find one at this link. Happy Holidays, and get covered!
I also wanted to go on the record with my prediction for the final private enrollment tally projection for the "real" 1/1/14 coverage deadline of midnight tonight: 1.95 - 2.0 million.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
A few more minor updates today, but honestly, with the deadline having passed in a few states, extended to tonight in most, and extended until through Friday in still others, it's gonna be chaotic to keep up for a few days.
HOWEVER, here's where things stand as of 11:30am, 12/24/13 (thanks to ArcticStones for the Vermont & Colorado updates):
--CALIFORNIA: They hit 30,000 private enrollments yesterday, up from 15K/day 2 weeks ago to 20K/day last week. I currently have them at around 450,000 total, which coincides with their "over 400K" tweet from 24 hours ago (ie, there's been a good 30-60K more since then).
Enrollments in private health plans on Healthplanfinder, the state’s online insurance marketplace, surged past 65,000 as applicants hustled to beat the Monday night deadline for coverage beginning Jan. 1, Washington Health Benefit Exchange officials reported Tuesday. Nearly 69,000 others have completed the enrollment process, but haven’t arranged payment, and another group of undetermined size has begun applications that are in varying stages of completion. ... As of Monday at midnight, about 100,800 people newly eligible for health insurance through the state’s expanded Medicaid program had signed up. Almost half of those were transferring from the now-discontinued Basic Health program or were presumed qualified for a federal assistance program for the disabled. An additional 47,500 enrollments were from those who previously qualified for Medicaid under the old rules — primarily children — but had not been signed up. And more than 88,000 people already covered by Medicaid renewed their eligibility.
For private enrollments, Washington is the only state that distinguishes between "enrolled but not paid yet" and "enrolled and first month's premium paid"; every other state, and the HHS, counts you as being enrolled even if you haven't actually paid yet, so that's the criteria I use, although I did separate out the other 69K on the spreadsheet. For Medicaid, I'm not counting the 88K since they were just renewals, but the 47.5K do count since they appear to fall into the category of people who were already qualified but didn't know about it until the ACA and the state exchange. In addition, as in several other states, another 47,000 people are being automatically transferred over to Medicaid proper from an existing state program; this is one of the "orange cells" on the spreadsheet. Also, h/t to sulthernao, who found the actual WA exchange source that gives the precise numbers.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
OK, after my victory lap the other day upon confirmation that ACASignups.net had nailed the actual current number of private Obamacare exchange enrollments with 99% accuracy, it was pointed out to me by ericlewis0 that even including the Medicare/SCHIP expansion enrollments, the actual total number of people who now have healthcare coverage (or are about to as of 10 days from now) who previously didn't is actually more than 8 Million.
That is to say, I completely forgot the 3.1 million (as of June 2012...it was 2.5 million a year earlier, so I'm sure it's even higher today) young adults under 26 years old who now have coverage through their parents policies who otherwise wouldn't have, thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
If you add these 3.1 million to the 1.4 million private enrollments and the 3.9 million Medicaid/SCHIP expansion enrollments, that actually comes to around 8.4 million.
More than one million Americans signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act during the first three weeks of December, including 500,000 through the federal exchange, President Barack Obama announced Friday.
Official enrollments 10/1 - 11/30: 364,682
"Over 1 Million" 12/01 - 12/20: at least 1,000,001
Total: 1,364,683
ACASignups.net as of this morning: 1,349,562
Damn, we're good.
Thanks to ArcticStones, ybruti, MotherShipper, shiska64, rugbymom, timmyc, CJB, rsmpdx, dadadata, Rolyboy6 and everyone else who has been helping me with this project.
Meanwhile, check out the news on Medicaid (which has been spottier/harder to come by, even though the numbers are already higher):
If November had an Obamacare surge, consider this the December deluge. California averaged 15,000 daily enrollments early last week, about double the sign-ups the state had in early December. New York is now seeing about 4,500 residents choosing plans each day and, in Connecticut, the number is hovering around 1,400.
That bumped the number of private plan enrollments up to 815,000.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With the deadline approaching for Covered California™ health insurance coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2014, tens of thousands of new enrollees are seeking out help and signing up for plans. In fact, preliminary data indicates that in just the past three days (Dec 16-18), 53,510 people enrolled by selecting a Covered California health insurance plan. That tops the 30,830 enrollments completed for the entire month of October by nearly 60 percent.
Seriously, can't I leave ACASignups.net alone for 5 friggin' minutes without having to update the numbers again???
The 15K per day average from last week was extremely impressive. This just upped the ante even more, culminating in the key line:
On Wednesday, Dec. 18, a total of 20,506 enrollments were received by Covered California
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Boy did I speak too soon. Earlier today I posted a diary stating that new enrollment figures for ACASignups.net have been a bit on the scarce side this week.
Literally moments after I posted the diary, WHAMMO:
If November had an Obamacare surge, consider this the December deluge. California averaged 15,000 daily enrollments early last week, about double the sign-ups the state had in early December. New York is now seeing about 4,500 residents choosing plans each day and, in Connecticut, the number is hovering around 1,400.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
UPDATE: Literally seconds after I posted this, some new numbers have come in from Kentucky and Connecticut that bump things up a bit more...
After a ton of new data last week, it seems that the state agencies have decided to put more focus on actually enrolling people and processing their forms than issuing their numbers. This is a polite way of saying that ACASignups.net is at a bit of a standstill at the moment, not because the enrollments aren't happening (if anything, they should be through the roof right now through next week), but because the numbers are just not being released as easily.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
OK, I'm not sure how much this particular milestone should be crowed about considering that over 40% of the enrollment period has elapsed, but new actual numbers have been rather thin over the weekend, so I figured I'd call some attention to it.
Since the original CBO projection (remember, that was a projection, not an actual goal) through 3/31/14 was a tad over 7 million, that means that the exchanges have broken through the 10% mark. Yay team!
Some other cool numbers:
--Connecticut continues to kick major ass, having enrolled over 56% of their CBO projection. They could easily double or even potentially even triple the 33,000 figure that they were expected to achieve by the end of March.
I'm also extremely happy to report that thanks to California finally updating their official numbers (partly spoiled by yesterday's November HHS Report), the official ACASignups.nettally has shattered through the 600K mark, and now stands at:
Private Plan Enrollments: 679,743
Medicaid/SCHIP Expansion: 1,829,180
Total: 2,508,923
Meanwhile, check out the trend/projection line, which has jumped from around 3.7 million up to around 4.2 million by 3/31/14.
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.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
I have to admit, I wasn't expecting the official November HHS ACA enrollment report to be released until Friday (October's was released on 11/13), so I've spent the past few hours scrambling to update the ACASignups.net spreadsheet and graph. I'm happy to say that I've finished doing so.
I also have to admit to being slightly bothered by the failure to include so much as a footnote mention of ACASignups.net in this morning's front-page story about the HHS report, considering that this project is being run by more than a dozen dedicated dKos members, has a devoted following here and elsewhere, has been updated daily on a state-by-state basis, has been recognized by both Markos and Joan here at dKos, and even recently received some recognition by Sarah Kliff at WashPost's WonkBlog.
To date, 106,185 persons have enrolled and selected a Marketplace plan—this includes those who have paid a premium and those who have not yet paid a premium.
Based on available data, 846,184 completed applications were submitted to Marketplaces during the first month of the initial open enrollment period (10-1-13 to 11-2-13), including applications that were submitted to the SBMs and FFM. These completed applications correspond to a total of 1,509,883 million individuals (persons) who have applied for coverage through the Marketplaces during this time period. This represents 22 percent of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated 7 million Marketplace enrollment in 2014.2 (Please see Appendix A for corresponding tables containing state-level data, and see Appendix B for methodological information on how these numbers were derived).
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
After a TON of activity last week, the ACASignups.netspreadsheet was a bit quiet over the weekend. However, several new stats came out yesterday and today which have things moving again:
--The NY Times reports that 112,000 people enrolled in private plans--via Healthcare.gov--in the first week of December. Note that this doesn't include the other 14 state-run exchanges (plus DC). By comparison, only 27,000 enrolled in the Federal exchange throughout October, and 100,000 in November. So, that's a 4x increase the 2nd month followed by (so far) a 4x increase the third month.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Yup, that's right: After 9 weeks of charting, graphing and otherwise tallying everyone else enrolling in healthcare plans via the ACA exchanges, I'm happy and relieved to report that my wife and I finally went ahead and enrolled ourselves.
Living in Michigan, we had to use HealthCare.gov. I'm very happy to confirm that the reports from the HHS Dept. and other media sources are correct: It's working infinitely faster and more reliably than even a couple of weeks ago.
Since my wife is the principle name listed on our current plan, and since we're sticking with the same company anyway (just switching to one of the new ACA-compliant plans), she insisted on creating a brand-new user account under her name, figuring that there might be some confusion caused within the company system if the new plan was entered with my name as the principle one. I have no idea if this makes sense or not, but figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to start fresh with the most recent bugfixes in place.
Roughly 27,000 Americans signed up for insurance on the federal exchange on Tuesday, according to internal figures, bringing the site’s three-day enrollment total to 56,000. That figure is more than double the number who enrolled online in the entire month of October, which was almost 27,000.
Needless to say, I've been scrambling to bring the ACASignups.net spreadsheet up to speed this morning.
It seems that the "December Spike" or "Post-Thanksgiving Surge" or whatever you want to call it that Pres. Obama and the HHS Dept. were hoping for is happening, and in a big way. The announcement that the biggest hurdles in the ongoing Healthcare.Gov website debacle have been resolved is no doubt a major part of this dramatic turn of events.
In any event, I think I'll be hopping over the next few weeks.
The enrollment surge follows a round-the-clock effort by federal tech officials and contractors to make more than 400 software fixes and hardware upgrades since the site’s disastrous launch.
Already added to the ACASignups.net spreadsheet; see updated graph below.
As you can see, at the current rate, they'll hit roughly 2.9 million by 3/31/14.
About 100,000 people signed up for health insurance through the online federal exchange last month, a roughly four-fold increase from October even as a team of U.S. government and contractor programmers was fixing the troubled Affordable Care Act website, said a person familiar with program’s progress.
The preliminary November numbers reflect individuals who successfully selected a plan.
Now, there's some important points to keep in mind here:
