OK, it looks like my theory about MA's "QHPs as % of Determinations" theory was wrong; I assumed that it would have started increasing from 50% over the past week, intstead it dropped to about 48% (or held steady at 52% if you include the "plans in cart" which neither I nor the MA exchange is doing anyway).
Therefore, the bad news is that the official total is around 8,300 fewer than I thought: 53,490 thorugh yesterday. The good news is that this is still an excellent number, and there's still tens of thousands of people who've started the process who have until next Tuesday to wrap it up.
In addition, remember my snark from 11/16 about "ONLY 3.5% HAVE PAID!!"? Well, guess what: That percentage is up to 34%, and they still have 5 days to pay (I presume they're dealing with a flood of payments at the moment).
The Medicaid tally holds at 98,530 since it doesn't include yesterday.
More Than 136,000 Marylanders Have Enrolled for Jan. 1 Coverage in State’s Health Insurance Marketplace
December 19th, 2014
ANNAPOLIS, MD – Governor O’Malley announced today that Maryland Health Connection, the state-based health insurance marketplace for individuals, families and small businesses, enrolled 136,685 individuals from the start of open enrollment onNov. 15 to last night’s deadline for coverage that begins Jan. 1.
That total includes 79,987 people signed up for private Qualified Health Plans (QHPs). More than three-quarters of QHP enrollees, or 61,448, are eligible for an Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) — upfront financial assistance to reduce their monthly insurance premiums. An additional 56,698 have enrolled in Medicaid since Nov. 15 through Maryland Health Connection. Open enrollment continues through Feb. 15, 2015.
MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31
MNsure sent this bulletin at 12/19/2014 11:34 AM CST
December 19, 2014
MNSURE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MNsure Extends Enrollment Deadline for January 1 Coverage to December 31
Decision follows transfer of enrollment information to insurance carriers and aligns enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage
ST. PAUL, Minn.—In an effort to provide more time for Minnesotans who qualify for financial help available only through MNsure, the organization today announced it would extend the enrollment deadline to December 31 for January 1 coverage.
Minnesotans must now enroll in coverage through MNsure by noon on Wednesday, December 31, to have their coverage effective on January 1, 2015. The change comes at a time of high interest in MNsure and as many health insurance companies recently extended their own enrollment deadlines for January 1 coverage.
Margot Sanger-Katz has a fascinating story today about the "woodworker" effect in non-expansion states. I've written about woodworkers many times before; the short version is, these are people who were already eligible for Medicaid even before/without the ACA expansion provisions, but who never actually enrolled in the program for any number of reasons. Their reasons could be personal (embarrassment/shame over taking a "handout"), it could be because they didn't know that they were eligible (the rules vary from state to state), it could be because the enrollment process is too confusing (again, not an easy process in some states).
Submitted by Charles Gaba on Thu, 12/18/2014 - 10:04pm
NOTE: I've decided to start posting my "Nightly Update" newsletters here on the site itself, since they sometimes are basically full posts themselves. Case in point...
As I noted this morning, between a serious backlog with my website clients (that's right, this isn't supposed to be my day job) and the fact that just about all of the state exchanges are updated to within the past few days, it was pretty light posting today. There were a few notable developments, however:
MA's deadline for January coverage isn't until Tuesday the 23rd, so they've been holding pretty steady, although the numbers are definitely moving up gradually (note that they did have a mini-spike on Monday as well). Speaking of January enrollment deadlines...
Maryland's Deadline is Tonight at Midnight!
I didn't post anything about this beyond highlighting MD on the home page of the site, but it's worth noting, since I'm assuming they'll have a Big Press Release tomorrow with their total numbers.
For comparison, they reported 61K QHPs (and 41.9K Medicaid additions) as of 12/15. To reach the HHS's "30% over 2014" target, they'll have to hit 88K by February 15th, or 101K to reach my own "50% over 2014" target for Maryland, so they're doing very well so far.
The 51 states (including the District of Columbia) that provided enrollment data for October 2014 reported nearly 68.5 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. This enrollment count is point-in-time (on the last day of the month) and includes all enrollees in the Medicaid and CHIP programs who are receiving a comprehensive benefit package.
428,311 additional people were enrolled in October 2014 as compared to September 2014 in the 51 states that reported comparable September and August data.
(And yes, the "51 states" wording is CMS's, not mine)
Chalk up another 4,433 QHP eligibility determinations for MA yesterday. Assuming 60% of those have selected a plan, the cumulative total for 2015 should be up to around 61,800 people to date.
As of mid-April, Massachusetts had only enrolled a total of 31,695 people. That means that assuming I'm close, the Bay State should double their 2014 QHP enrollment by tomorrow.
In addition, their Medicaid enrollments are closing in quickly on the 100K mark (98,530), and should easily cross it tomorrow as well.
Exhibit A: I'm way behind on several projects from, you know, my day job.
Exhibit B: As you can see from The Spreadsheet, the enrollment data from every one of the state-based exchanges is current within the past week (WA is from 12/10, VT from 12/11, RI from 12/13 and all others are from the 14th, 15th or 16th).
Therefore, aside from the daily dashboard from Massachusetts (or if there's some huge ACA enrollment development), I'm taking the day off.
Hawaii's updates are particularly frustrating because they have a tendency to only give the cumulative plan selections to date, mixing together 2014 & 2015 numbers regardless of whether they've actually enrolled/re-enrolled for 2015 or not. Therefore, it's refreshing to see a (relatively) straightforward update out of the Aloha state:
The Hawaii Health Connector enrolled 3,500 people in its first month of open enrollment, which ended on Monday, the exchange confirmed Tuesday.
The state's online health insurance exchange saw more than an eleven-fold increase in enrollment in comparison to its first month of enrollment last year, when the just 300 signed up for health insurance on the Connector.
Of course, they couldn't help but mix numbers together later in the story:
...To date, roughly 13,500 residents have signed up for health insurance coverage that will begin on Jan 1.
Kissel noted that the Connector has also connected 50,000 to the expanded Medicaid program, which came in with the Affordable Care Act at no cost to the state.
OK, that's more like it...about 500 people in DC are being contacted by exchange personnel regarding technical issues, but over 2,600 made it through under the wire:
D.C. Health Exchange Director Mila Kofman said as many as 500 applications were left in limbo at 9 p.m. Monday, the cutoff for selecting coverage that would take effect on Jan. 1.
Kofman said 2,631 people enrolled successfully.
Employees at the exchange, known as D.C. Health Link, will spend the next several days contacting each applicant by phone or e-mail to walk them through a follow-up process to ensure unfinished applications are processed and those residents can begin receiving coverage beginning next month as planned, Kofman said.
DC had around 10,000 enrollees to start with; presumably the 2,631 figure is a mix of renewals and new additions.
