However, I just realized that they also threw in a new QHP enrollee update:
In addition, Lee reported Wednesday that as of Jan. 26, 273,111 consumers had picked a plan during open enrollment.
Add that to the 944K renewals and you have a grand total of 1,217,111 through 1/26.
That's an increase of 44,345 since January 12, or 3,167/day. Of course, this also includes the January 15th deadline, so it doesn't tell me much about the next week or so. For that, I'd have to look at the increase since 1/18 (1,200,427), which is just 16,684, or 2,085/day.
I've had a couple of days to shake off the funk I was in after CoveredCA director Peter Lee stated that they would not be releasing any 2014 renewal data until as late as February. I'm still pretty grumpy about that.
Through January 12: 228,766 New Individuals Selected a Qualified Health Plan for 2015
Big deal, right? It updates the new enrollment figure a bit, but that's about it. But wait a minute...what was the CA QHP total just 1 day earlier (through January 11th)?
Ouch. I was expecting CoveredCA to announce somewhere in the neighborhood of 314K new QHPs for 2015 through Sunday night (the 144K already announced, plus another 170K since 12/15). Instead, the total turned out to be just 217,146. I was way off on this figure, and I'm willing to accept that. In fact, in retrospect, I must've miscalculated something, since the odds of enrolling more new people in the 28 days following the January coverage deadline (which also included the "dead zones" of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day) than the 31 days before that deadline were almost nil.
As I noted the other day, CoveredCA will be releasing (hopefully) completely updated ACA enrollment data, right up through Sunday night (1/11) in about a half an hour. So far they've only said that 144K new QHP enrollees have been added, and even that only includes 11/15 - 12/15. They haven't released any data on renewals of the 1.12 million 2014 enrollees yet, nor have they issued any further updates on new additions since Dec. 15th, 4 full weeks ago.
I've noted several times that I'm expecting them to announce roughly 960K renewals (active + automatic) from California, or around 85% of current enrollees to be renewed/re-enrolled. If that proves accurate, that would bring their 12/15 total up to around 1.1 million. That just leaves the new enrollments since 12/15.
Obviously the real unknown here is the renewal/autorenewal number. If it's fairly close to 85%, I should be pretty close on my total.
As I noted Saturday, CoveredCA is supposedly going to finally release their full, updated ACA enrollment data between now and Wednesday. So far they've only said that 144K new QHP enrollees have been added, and even that only includes 11/15 - 12/15. They haven't released any data on renewals of the 1.12 million 2014 enrollees yet, nor have they issued any further updates on new additions since Dec. 15th, 4 full weeks ago.
I've noted several times that I'm expecting them to announce roughly 960K renewals (active + automatic) from California, or around 85% of current enrollees to be renewed/re-enrolled. If that proves accurate, that would bring their 12/15 total up to around 1.1 million.
This article pretty mostly is a more in-depth explanation of the Medicaid/Medi-Cal situation in California that I wrote about the other day. However, the final line in the article also addresses my other post from a couple of days ago, asking when the heck CA and NY are going to release updated enrollment data (including renewals from 2014, which should account for around 960K in CA alone):
...New enrollment numbers from Covered California for the rest of December will be released next week, exchange officials said, before the exchange board meets Jan. 15.
Woo-hoo! Today is the 10th, tomorrow is Sunday, so they should be coming out with fully-updated (I hope) data from the largest state in the country sometime between Monday & Wednesday.
LA Times reporter Chris Megerian has posted an important story about California's looming healthcare budget crisis. It mostly deals with the headaches facing the state budget as it tackles major increases in both Medi-Cal (CA's name for Medicaid) and the cost of caring for public employee retirees, and is a good read for healthcare/budget wonks.
What caught my eye, however, was this line about halfway through:
Over the next year, total Medi-Cal enrollment is expected to reach 12.2 million, he said — about one-third of the state's population. It was less than 8 million in 2013.
Hmmm...that sounds a bit high to me, so I ran the numbers against my own current estimates and came up with the following:
The 980K confirmed by the 14 assorted state-run exchanges,
The unreported renewals (both active and automatic) from California & New York, and
Another roughly 150,000 scattered amongst all 50 states & DC since the date of their most recent updates until today (which varies from as little as 1 day to as much as 25 days in the case of Idaho).
If you do the math, you'll see that the biggest missing piece here is the 3rd item above: Covered California and New York State of Health have, to date, still refused to give out any re-enrollment/renewal data for 2014 QHP enrollees. Not just autorenewal numbers, but active renewals as well.
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.
As you can see from the graphic I posted yesterday (and had to revise several times throughout the day), the official enrollment deadline for private policies starting on January 1st, 2015 has now passed for all 37 states operating via HealthCare.Gov, as well as residents of DC, Hawaii and Kentucky. It's certainly possible that any or all of these will announce some sort of "special circumstances" allowance for those who didn't make the midnight cut-off (10pm in Alaska), but I'm assuming those would be done strictly on a case-by-case basis.
OK, so what about the remaining 11 states?
Well, 4 of them (MD, MA, RI & WA) had later deadlines for January coverage all along: Maryland on 12/18 (Thursday) and the other 3 on 12/23 (next Tuesday).
New York and Idaho bumped their deadlines out from yesterday until 12/20 (Saturday), although Idaho had previously claimed that their deadline was 12/23, but are now claiming that it was originally 12/15. I still don't understand what happened there, but so be it: 12/20 it is for ID.
