Not much of an update, but good to see a hard number officially posted at AccessHealthCT (I assume they'll be updating this regularly from the looks of it):
That same day in Connecticut [Wednesday, Nov. 1st], 1,596 residents enrolled in qualified health plans on the state exchange while another 2,293 people either completed Medicaid applications or determined that they were eligible for that program. Access Health CT CEO Jim Wadleigh said in a statement that the state’s call center and website experienced a 15 percent increase in volume compared to opening day last year.
Not much to add here; last year the first enrollment number I had for Connecticut didn't show up until halfway through November (about 16,000 selections in 15 days), but that doesn't give me much to compare with for the first day only. Still, the 15% traffic increase is a good thing.
I ran an updated analysis of the requested average rate hikes for Connecticut last month. At the time, the only two carriers operating on the CT exchange next year (Anthem and ConnectiCare) were still noncommittal about actually committing to doing so. Statewide, it looked like the carriers were asking for rate increases averaging around 23.8% if CSR payments were guaranteed or 33.5% if they weren't.
As reported by Louise Norris today, the Connecticut insurance dept. reported that both carriers have now committed to sticking around next year, and the approved average rate increases now assume that CSR payments won't be made after all. In the end, the statewide average looks like roughly 28.4% (Norris pegs it at 29.3%, but that's because she generally only includes individual market carriers participating on the ACA exchanges, while I also include carriers and plans offered off-exchange as well).
As noted in the Virginia and Maryland updates, I've started going through the earlier state rate filings and revising them to include:
Updated/revised carrier rate filings;
Additional market withdrawls and/or expansions;
Corrections to CSR factor impact, etc.
The original versions of each state writeup includes screen shots of the actual filing documents and explainers behind specific requests; I don't have time for that with most of the updates, so I'm bundling several states together. Here's Connecticut, Oregon and Vermont's revisions:
UPDATE: As I've been warning for months, several carriers have now openly stated that perhaps 40% of their requested rate hike is due specifically to concerns about the Trump administration & the GOP's ongoing sowing of confusion and outright sabotage of the ACA and the individual market.
Unlike most states, Connecticut did all the legwork for me, making it incredibly easy to plug the numbers into a spreadsheet for weighted average (requested, unsubsidized) rate hikes for both the individual and small group markets:
In Connecticut, 111,541 people selected Qualified Health Plans during the 2017 Open Enrollment Period. Of these, 76% are receiving financial assistance; of those, I estimate around 69,000 will actually pay their premiums and receive significant tax credits. In addition, the CT Dept. of Social Services just confirmed 213,000 CT residents enrolled in Medicaid via ACA expansion. That's a total of 282,000 CT residents who would likely lose coverage if the ACA is fully repealed without a reasonable replacement on hand.
For the individual market, my standard methodology applies:
Over the past few weeks I've compiled increasingly solid evidence (supported by a separate analysis by David Anderson of Balloon Juice) showing that yes, a significant portion of the reduced 2017 ACA exchange enrollment was due specifically to sabotage efforts on the part of Donald Trump and the GOP.
I've mainly focused on the last-minute "ad kill" stunt pulled by the Trump administration, in which they yanked millions of dollars worth of TV ads reminding people fo the deadline during the critical last 5 days, and the evidence is pretty telling: Enrollment across the 39 states run through the federal exchange (HC.gov) dropped by about 5% from last year, while enrollment on the other 12 state exchanges increased by over 2% (there's still final enrollment data to be added from ID, MN, RI & VT).
The reason this is so significant is that the state exchanges have their own marketing budgets, ad campaigns, outreach efforts and most significantly, branding. Ads promoting "Covered California" are gonna have a far bigger impact on enrollment for the residents of CA than ads for "HealthCare.Gov". There's some residual effect, because some people visit HC.gov first and are then redirected to CoveredCA from there, but for the most part, the state exchange branding is completely separate. (As an aside, this can sometimes have negative consequences, as in the case of "kynect" in Kentucky, which did such a bang-up job of isolating their brand from "Obamacare" that most of the state hasn't the foggiest idea that the two were the exact same law, but that's a separate discussion).
LT. GOVERNOR WYMAN, ACCESS HEALTH CT ANNOUNCE 2017 OPEN ENROLLMENT NUMBERS
111,524 Residents Enrolled Through Access Health CT; 13,791 are New to the Exchange
(HARTFORD, Conn.) – Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, Chair of the Board of Access Health CT (AHCT), and AHCT CEO Jim Wadleigh today announced that the state’s health insurance exchange enrolled 111,524 residents during the 2017 Open Enrollment Period, which ended at midnight on January 31, 2017. Of those enrollees, 13,791 consumers are brand new to the exchange. In addition, 5,000 people came through AHCT seeking dental coverage and 1,467 enrolled in health coverage through the Small Business Program.
It may seem a little silly to keep posting these tiny individual-state updates with everything going on at the moment, but every enrollee counts. Access Health CT held their monthly board meeting yesterday and posted some noteworthy data/policy points.
The irony is that this is exactly how the ACA should be being handled by Congress and the President: By using actual hard data and logic, problem-solving, fixing what's broken and improving upon what isn't.
...none of which seems to mean a damned thing to Trump or the Trumpublican Party.
107,736 have enrolled in a QHP for 2017. That includes 12k new customers. #AHCTBoDMeeting
