In Week Three of the 2021 Open Enrollment period, 758,421 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform. As in past years, enrollment weeks are measured Sunday through Saturday.
Every week during Open Enrollment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release enrollment snapshots for the HealthCare.gov platform, which is used by the Federally-facilitated Exchange and some State-based Exchanges. These snapshots provide point-in-time estimates of weekly plan selections, call center activity, and visits to HealthCare.gov or CuidadoDeSalud.gov.
The final number of plan selections associated with enrollment activity during a reporting period may change due to plan modifications or cancellations. In addition, the weekly snapshot only reports new plan selections and active plan renewals and does not report the number of consumers who have paid premiums to effectuate their enrollment.
In Week Two of the 2021 Open Enrollment period, 803,741 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform. As in past years, enrollment weeks are measured Sunday through Saturday.
Every week during Open Enrollment, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release enrollment snapshots for the HealthCare.gov platform, which is used by the Federally-facilitated Exchange and some State-based Exchanges. These snapshots provide point-in-time estimates of weekly plan selections, call center activity, and visits to HealthCare.gov or CuidadoDeSalud.gov.
The final number of plan selections associated with enrollment activity during a reporting period may change due to plan modifications or cancellations. In addition, the weekly snapshot only reports new plan selections and active plan renewals and does not report the number of consumers who have paid premiums to effectuate their enrollment.
Every Open Enrollment Period (OEP) for for the past several years, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) have issued a Weekly Snapshot Enrollment Report including the top-line Qualified Health Plan (QHP) enrollment data via HealthCare.Gov for that week along with the cumulative totals. They normally post these reports, which run Sunday - Saturday, on the following Wendesday...but yesterday came and went without one being released this year.
Given the insanity surrounding last week's Presidential election (along with the results) and the ongoing COVID19 pandemic, I was beginning to wonder whether they'd bother issuing those reports at all. Fortunately, they followed through late this afternoon:
Week 1, November 1-November 7, 2020
In week one of the 2021 Open Enrollment period, 818,365 people selected plans using the HealthCare.gov platform. As in past years, enrollment weeks are measured Sunday through Saturday.
Approximately 8.3 million people selected or were automatically re-enrolled in plans using the HealthCare.gov platform during the 2020 open enrollment period.
These snapshots provide point-in-time estimates of weekly plan selections, call center activity and visits to HealthCare.gov or CuidadoDeSalud.gov. The final snapshot reports new plan selections, active plan renewals and automatic enrollments. It does not report the number of consumers who paid premiums to effectuate their enrollment.
As we do each year, CMS also plans to release a detailed 2020 final enrollment report in March, including final plan selection data from State-based Exchanges that do not use the HealthCare.gov platform.
Normally the Weekly HC.gov Snapshot Reports are released on Wednesdays. This week it was delayed until Friday in order to include the extra 2 1/2 days:
The final official day (Dec. 15th) fell on a Sunday this year
The additional 36 hour extension from 3pm on Monday 12/16 - midnight Eastern on Wednesday 12/18*
Not only is "Week 7" actually 9.5 days, but the final week of Open Enrollment also always includes a last-minute enrollment surge as people scramble to beat the deadline (both the original and the extension). In addition, it's also traditionally the week that CMS adds all of the auto-renewals to the report for current enrollees who neither actively selected a policy for 2020, nor did they cancel their coverage for the new year.
The Week 6 HealthCare.Gov Snapshot Report from CMS should be released sometime Wednesday afternoon, covering enrollment in 38 states from Dec. 1st - 7th.
As a reminder, here's what the Week 5 report looked like (for Nov. 1st - 30th):
There are two major things to account for when comparing the two years: First, there's a day missing due to Nov. 1st falling on a Friday instead of a Thursday this year. This likely accounts for around ~120,000 of the difference. Secondly, Nevada split off from HC.gov this year, which accounts for around ~19,000 of the gap the first 3 weeks. In addition, a small portion of the difference is likely due to Idaho and Maine expanding Medicaid; exchange enrollees earning between 100-138% FPL should be tranferred over to Medicaid instead.
I'm just putting this out there today because I know there's gonna be a bunch of eye-rolling stories completely misunderstanding the data later on this week.
Last Wednesday, the Week 4 HealthCare.Gov Snapshot Enrollment Report came out and showed a "mysterious" 41% increase in ACA exchange enrollments for the week vs. last year...jumping from 500,437 QHP selections to 703,556 QHP selections for the corresponding week this year.
This Wednesday, the Week 5 snapshot report will come out and will almost certainly show a "mysterious" large drop in ACA exchange enrollments vs. last year...from 772,250 down to perhaps 500,000 or so.
I'm just putting this out there today because I know there's gonna be a bunch of eye-rolling stories completely misunderstanding the data later on this week.
Last Wednesday, the Week 4 HealthCare.Gov Snapshot Enrollment Report came out and showed a "mysterious" 41% increase in ACA exchange enrollments for the week vs. last year...jumping from 500,437 QHP selections to 703,556 QHP selections for the corresponding week this year.
This Wednesday, the Week 5 snapshot report will come out and will almost certainly show a "mysterious" large drop in ACA exchange enrollments vs. last year...from 772,250 down to perhaps 500,000 or so.
Around 7,000 or so of this drop will likely be due to Nevada splitting off onto their own ACA exchange. A small number will be due to Idaho expanding Medicaid. But the vast bulk of this seemingly disastrous ~35% drop will be for a far simpler reason...the same one which caused the seeming 41% spike last week: Thanksgiving.
The Week 4 HealthCare.Gov Snapshot Report from CMS should be released at any time, covering enrollment in 38 states from Nov. 10th - Nov. 23th.
As a reminder, here's what the Week 3 report looked like:
There are two major things to account for when comparing the two years: First, there's a day missing due to Nov. 1st falling on a Friday instead of a Thursday this year. This likely accounts for around ~120,000 of the difference. Secondly, Nevada split off from HC.gov this year, which accounts for around ~19,000 of the gap the first 3 weeks. In addition, a small portion of the difference is likely due to Idaho and Maine expanding Medicaid; exchange enrollees earning between 100-138% FPL should be tranferred over to Medicaid instead.
The Week 3 HealthCare.Gov Snapshot Report from CMS should be released later on this afternoon, covering enrollment in 38 states from Nov. 10th - Nov. 16th.
As a reminder, here's what the Week 2 report looked like:
There are two major things to account for when comparing the two years: First, there's a day missing due to Nov. 1st falling on a Friday instead of a Thursday this year. This likely accounts for around half of the 244,000 difference. The other significant difference is that Nevada split off from HC.gov this year, which accounted for around 12,000 of the gap the first 2 weeks.
If you assume around 130,000 of the difference is due to the missing day, that still leaves 2020 Open Enrollment around 100,000 short of the same time period last year on HealthCare.Gov.
