Rhode Island: 28.1K QHPs, 91% Payment Rate (sort of)

As of January 17th, Rhode Island had enrolled about 28.8K people in private plans for 2015, or around 78% of their "official" target (based on the HHS Dept's "30% higher than last year" target).

Today they've released another update, bringing things up to date through January 24:

RENEWAL UPDATE*
As of January 24, 2015, 79% of Year One customers have renewed (selected a plan) for 2015 (75% of renewing customers paid the first month’s premium).
Total New Customers: 7,862 (6,539 paid)
Total Renewed Customers: 20,283 (19,189 paid)
Total HealthSource RI enrollments for 2015 coverage: 28,145 (25,728 paid)

Hey, cool! That's a 91% payment rate! Um...except for one thing...somehow they've lost 644 people? Oh, wait...

*Note: Individuals who selected a plan but did not pay by their selected ‘coverage effective date’ were cancelled. Reported enrollment values (plan selections, paid and unpaid) will fluctuate, with potential net decrease due to plan selection cancellation, after the January 23 coverage payment deadline.

Hoo, boy. OK...here's where things are going to get a bit messy.

Believe me, I applaud Rhode Island for being dilligent about separating out (and immediately cancelling) unpaid enrollees who go past-due...but this causes another headache for me, because they're basically the only state doing so at this point. Other states, such as Vermont and Massachusetts, are also tracking payment rates (thankfully), but they haven't started deleting unpaid numbers from the official reports so far.

Still, even if you use the pre-purged total from last week (28,789) as the denominator, that's still an 89% payment rate for Rhode Island, which is excellent!

So, what this means going forward is that Rhode Island's QHP selection total will be somewhat lower than it has been, but their payment rate will be higher (as a percentage of that total). Theoretically, if they're extremely dilligent about this, as of February 24th they'll have a 100% effective payment rate, since anyone who didn't pay up will have had their policies cancelled, period.

They go on to add some plan renewal-vs-switcher stats, which is especially important in Rhode Island, where there were no automatic renewals allowed as a policy decision (as opposed to some other states where they had no choice for technical reasons):

2015 Enrollee Plan Selection
20 plans are available on HSRI’s Individual Market for 2015, up from 12 plans in 2014, including some lower cost options for 2015. HSRI is providing a snapshot below of how new and renewing customers are choosing plans–this data includes both customers who have paid and those who have not yet paid.

Renewed Customers
2015 vs. 2014 Selection by Plan, by Metal Level and by Insurer

61% of renewing individuals have selected a different plan for 2015
38% of renewing individuals have selected a plan with a different carrier for 2015
81% of renewing individuals have selected a plan in the same metal level for 2015; 6% of renewing individuals bought up by metal level for 2015, while 13% bought down by metal level for 2015

Finally, there's the SHOP enrollment update:

SHOP Enrollment**
Cumulative as of January 24, 2015

Small employer accounts created: 1,929
Small employer applications completed: 553

Small employer enrollment (paid and unpaid): 455
These employers represent 3,336 covered lives

Small employer enrollment (paid): 437
These employers represent 3,184 covered lives

77% of small employers are enrolled in the Full Choice Model

Unfortunately, there was a clerical snag last week, causing the SHOP total to drop as well:

**Note: Last week’s (1/17/15) SHOP application and enrollment figures were slightly inflated due to a reporting error that has been corrected in this week’s release.