A nice, no-BS, pretty comprehensive enrollment update out of Colorado:
DENVER, CO – In the first month of Open Enrollment, 136,315 Coloradans enrolled in healthcare coverage for 2015, either in Medicaid, Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) or in commercial health insurance purchased through the state health insurance Marketplace, according to new data released today by Connect for Health Colorado® and the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
“These initial sign-ups during this first month were consistent with our projections and culminated with a single-day record of 12,600 enrollments on December 15th,” said Connect for Health Colorado Interim CEO Gary Drews. “It’s also important to remember that it’s not too late for people to purchase health insurance for 2015. Open enrollment continues until February 15th.”
Dec. 15 was the deadline for individuals and families to select plans for coverage to begin on Jan. 1. Connect for Health Colorado will continue working with those who started their application by Dec. 15 to help finish it so they can be covered by the New Year. Customers also have to take the last step to ensure their coverage: make the first payment on time.
Just over a month into open enrollment at HealthSource RI, nearly half of the people who purchased health insurance in 2014 have renewed coverage for another year, the state-based exchange created under the Affordable Care Act announced Wednesday.
Through Dec. 13, 9,825 people, or 48 percent had renewed coverage, with close to 60 percent opting to switch to different plans.
Another 2,522 have signed up for health insurance for the first time, bringing total enrollment to 12,347.
The numbers in RI are small, but there's some important data points here:
Massachusetts continues to chug along, with another 4.243 QHP eligibility determinations; assuming a minimum 60% plan selection rate, that should add another 2,500 or so to the total, for around 59K QHPs to date.
Meanwhile, Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollments have broken 94,000:
OK, strictly speaking this isn't directly ACA-related, but come on...
Shumlin: "The time is not right"
Vermont has long had a two-pronged approach to building a single-payer health care system. First, they would figure out what they would want the system to look like. Then, they would figure out how to pay for it.
The state passed legislation outlining how the single-payer system would work in 2011. And ever since, the state has been trying to figure out how to pay for a system that covers everybody. Most estimates suggest that the single payer system would cost $2 billion each year. For a state that only collects $2.7 billion in revenue, that is a large sum of money.
What Shumlin appears to be saying today is that the "time is not right" to move forward on the financing of the single-payer system. And that means putting the whole effort aside, with no clear moment when the debate would be reopened.
Ouch.
Thanks to Morgan True for the link to this PowerPoint report which explains why VT is pulling the plug on their ambitious Single Payer attempt:
As of Thursday the 12th, MNsure had enrolled about 14.4K people for private 2015 policies. Thanks to the December Surge Weekend, this has jumped up by more than 9,300 more:
Latest Enrollment Numbers
December 17, 2014
Health Coverage Type Cumulative Enrollments
Medical Assistance 17,888
MinnesotaCare 7,681 Qualified Health Plan (QHP) 23,797
TOTAL 49,366
Hmmm...MNsure is currently enrolling people at 3x the rate they did all of last year. Assuming that this doesn't include automatic renewals, that's pretty good. They bumped their enrollment deadline for January coverage out until Friday afternoon (4:30pm, for some reason), which is even better.
UPDATE: According to this Modern Healthcare article, only about 42% of MN's enrollments to date are renewals. In one sense, this is good since it suggests that they still have a good 31K potential renewals to work with.
No formal press release yet, but CT is the 2nd state (after Kentucky) to announce how many 2014 enrollees were automatically renewed (as opposed to manually renewing):
66,000 of our customers were auto enrolled in our system and continue to have health coverage for 2015. #OEUpdate
The most recent update I have from Connecticut was 13,000 new enrollees, but that was only through last Friday, before the big weekend push. That means they added another 7K over the weekend; not bad!
As CoveredCA has noted before, they have no plans on posting renewed policy enrollments until January, but this at least gives data on the new additions:
COVERED CALIFORNIA AND DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH CARE SERVICES RELEASE EARLY RESULTS FOR FIRST MONTH OF OPEN ENROLLMENT THROUGH HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGE
Demand for Coverage Continues to Be Strong, with Applications Submitted for More Than 592,000 People Through Dec. 15
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — More than 592,000 people sought coverage and were determined eligible for private health insurance and eligible or likely eligible for Medi-Cal in the first month of open enrollment, Covered California and the California Department of Health Care Services announced Wednesday.
The consumers, who applied for coverage through Covered California since open enrollment began on Nov. 15, include 157,361 eligibility determinations and an additional 144,178 plan selections for private coverage, as well as 216,423 enrollments into Medi-Cal coverage and 74,965 who are likely eligible for Medi-Cal. So far in 2014, Medi-Cal has enrolled more than 2.2 million consumers.
After all the craziness of the past day or two, I figured this would be a good time for a reality check. I've taken the 2014 Open Enrollment Period Graph, compressed it so that the time period and scale match the 2015 Period (ie, 3 months instead of 6.5) and have overlaid it on top of the 2015 Graph to see how they compare. The comparison is pretty striking.
(NOTE: I've modified this version to make the adjusted timeframes less confusing, and clicking below will now load the full-size version in a new window):
Wow! This was unexpected; while several other states have provided enrollment updates today, and some have broken out (or at least included) both new enrollments as well as manual renewals/re-enrollments, Kentucky is the first one to include automatic renewals as well!
Webb is one of 101,114 Kentuckians who have newly enrolled or re-enrolled in Obamacare health plans during the first 30 days of open enrollment through the state's health insurance exchange, kynect. State numbers released late Tuesday afternoon show that 16,139 residents met eligibility requirements for Medicaid, 9,215 newly enrolled in qualified health plans and 75,760 auto-renewed last year's private kynect health plans since re-enrollment began Nov. 15.
