This is an excellent overview of how healthcare pundits, politicos, reporters and industry folks are keeping a very close eye on the ACA exchanges this weekend, as the December 15th deadline for January coverage approaches (well, for most states, that is; 6 states now have deadlines later than the 15th). It's well worth a read, as it goes into the whole "manual renewal" vs. "autorenewal" issue and a whole mess of other stuff.
However, towards the end are two additional data points:
CMS officials, including Marketplace CEO Kevin Counihan have been reassuring about auto-enrollment, said Martin Hickey, CEO of New Mexico’s co-op health plan. “It’s a stressor, but I haven’t seen him biting his fingernails,” Hickey said of Counihan. “But you never know.” His own health plan has had 3,ooo people sign up as of Dec. 10 through HealthCare.gov and the pace is picking up.
The latest official report from the MD exchange...
Enrollment Report (Thru Dec. 11, 2014)
More than 80,000 Marylanders have enrolled in advance of Dec. 18 deadline for full 2015 health coverage
Overview
As of Dec. 11, a total of 80,354 Marylanders have enrolled in quality, affordable health coverage for calendar year 2015 since the 90-day open enrollment period began Nov. 15.
This includes 45,014 individuals enrolled in private Qualified Health Plans and 35,340 individuals enrolled in Medicaid. Marylanders must enroll or renew their plans by Dec. 18 for insurance that starts New Year’s Day and, if they qualify, to receive an Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC) beginning then. Open enrollment for 2015 ends Feb. 15.
Again, for comparison: Last year, Maryland scored a grand total of 67,757 QHP enrollments through the April 19th open enrollment cut-off (6 1/2 months).
This year, they've already reached 2/3 of that in under 4 weeks.
Hmmmmm...MA has switched their weekly reports from Mondays to Fridays, which is fine...except that until now the weekly versions also included actual hard "QHP plans selected" data.
This one...doesn't. It includes all the other weekly stuff but not the actual plans selected (aka "total enrollments" by my lingo). As a result, I'll still have to do an estimate based on the Eligibility Determinations...which in this case is a total of 83,988.
Assuming that the % of QHP determinations which have already led to actual plan selections is up to around 60% per day by now (up from around 52% a week or so ago), that should mean roughly 44,800 QHP selections to date. To be cautious, however, i'll knock it down to an even 44K for now.
And, again, Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollments are already up to 72,175 people.
Unfortunately no breakout between the two yet...hopefully soon...I also don't know what date that number runs through, nor do I know if the QHP tally includes new enrollments only (a la California & Connecticut) or if it also includes renewals as well.
Also, we now have our first official Deadline Extension due to the massive snowstorm in Buffalo/etc recently:
@charles_gaba State also says deadline to enroll for jan. extended to Dec. 20 b/c of "extreme weather"
CEO Mario Schlosser is happy to finally be able to sell. The company started this year’s enrollment period with 17,000 members and grew to “way more than that” in the first week, he says. That represents around $85 million in annual revenue from health insurance premiums, which he says equals “a few hundred million dollars in actual health care spend.”
Oscar’s member count sounds small compared to what people have come to expect for Web startups, where anything shy of 10 million users is a flop. But 17,000 members handily beats the company’s initial goal of 7,500, Schlosser says. Oscar now claims 10% market share for the health care exchange in New York, its home market. Two weeks ago, Oscar began selling in New Jersey. The company has plans to expand into California and Texas in late 2015.
OK, I've been considering this for a few days now, but I wanted to wait for the actual 3rd week HC.gov snapshot to come in before committing to it.
Until now, I've kept my 2015 Open Enrollment Period projections pretty solid: 7.0 million by Dec. 15th; 8.0 million by Jan. 15th and 12.0 million by February 15th.
Of that 12.0 million total, I figured that around 88% will (eventually) pay for at least their first month's premium, or around 10.6 million.
With the deadline approaching for individuals to renew healthcare plans purchased on HealthCare.gov, Aetna has begun to see a surge in customers for 2015, the insurer's new president said on Thursday during a meeting with analysts and investors.
HealthCare.gov has a Dec. 15 deadline for individuals to renew their 2014 plans or select new ones before it will automatically re-enroll them for next year. Enrollment for individual plans is open until Feb. 15, which were created under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.
Karen Rohan, whose appointment was announced earlier this month, said that the company expects a surge in enrollment over the next few days and that it was "starting to see" that already. Aetna sells these plans in 17 states.
Hmmm...on the surface these numbers seem fairly clear: 8,058 QHPs, 20,942 Medicaid. However, the wording of the article, combined with the fact that 8K in 26 days is only 310/day so far (versus 2014's 396/day average) makes me suspect that this only refers to new enrollments and doesn't include renewals of existing enrollees. In addition, the previous data release by AccessHealthCT clarified that it only included new enrollments.
So far, in the ongoing round of open enrollment that began Nov. 15, some 8,058 Connecticut residents have enrolled in plans offered by private insurers and 20,942 have enrolled in Medicaid plans, Madrak said. That’s more than the first year at around this time. However, the numbers last year were reversed and some 14,365 residents enrolled with one of the private insurance carriers and 9,075 had enrolled in Medicaid through the close of business Dec. 4, 2013
If this only includes new enrollees, then the odds are that the total number is actually at least double that (16K+) and likely more like 20K+.
