BOISE, Idaho – Since Open Enrollment began on November 1, over 93,000 Idahoans have selected a health insurance plan for 2016 through Your Health Idaho. Approximately 86,000 Idahoans are currently enrolled for 2015 coverage.
“We are pleased to see an increase in enrollments at this half-way mark,” said Your Health Idaho executive director, Pat Kelly. “This demonstrates there is a continued need for access to affordable healthcare in Idaho. The good news is that Idahoans who remain uninsured still have until January 31 to enroll for health and dental coverage. But we encourage people to act now.” Idahoans who complete an application between now and January 31 will have coverage as early as February.
Idahoans who need assistance picking a health insurance plan can find a local agent or broker in their community to help them free of charge by visiting www.YourHealthIdaho.org and clicking on “find help near you.”
If you take a look at the State-by-State chart, you'll notice that in addition to a few clarifications here and there, there are 5 states (well, 4 states +DC) all the way at the bottom labelled "NO DATA YET".
California insists, just like last year, on doing this weird thing where they release the number of new enrollees who have signed up on a fairly regular basis, but the number of renewals by current enrollees is kept a secret all the way into January. I have no idea why they do that, and it's pretty important given that we're likely talking about somewhere between 1.0 - 1.3 million people here.
On the other hand, at least they've posted data on their new additions. DC, Idaho, Kentucky, New York and Vermont haven't even done that much as of this writing.
I admit that given the carnage of the past couple of weeks, I'm almost afraid to post this entry...but I had to write something positive about the CO-OP situation.
With the ACA-created CO-OPs seemingly dropping like flies due to the #RiskCorridorMassacre, I thought this would be a good time to flip things around and look at which CO-OPs are doing well (or at least not badly).
This isn't much, but it'll do for now:
Wisconsin's insurance department says it has no intention of shutting down its #ACA co-op, which appears it will remain solvent next year.
Rep. Rusche asked what our target enrollment is for this cycle and what barriers we see in making those targets. Mr. Kelly said the team is focused on the 80% goal of 92,000 as our enrollment target.Premium increases are a potential barrier. Net premium is a relatively small increase for most consumers, and each consumer will experience something different depending Page 5 of 14 on their plan, their location, their carrier, etc. We feel that while the premiums are increasing the relatively small net premium increase will mitigate this barrier to a large degree.
When I asked for clarification, they informed me that:
We currently have 86,659 effectuated enrollments with Your Health Idaho, as of September 15. The 92,000 would also refer to effectuated enrollments.
As it happens, at least two other state-based exchanges have done so as well:
COVERED CALIFORNIA: It's pretty obscure for the moment, but if you click the "Shop & Compare Tool" link at the lower left-hand corner of the CoveredCA website, you'll be given the option to shop around for 2016 plans (you can also choose 2015 plans in case you've had a qualifying life change and need coverage for the last 2 months of this year, or even 2014 plans if you still need that information for tax purposes or whatever):
Blue Cross of Idaho’s rates for individuals buying their own plans will go up an average of 23 percent. Company officials say the increase is needed after Blue Cross lost millions of dollars because current customer premiums are not keeping up with claims paid.
Last year, the company’s average rate increase for individual policies was about 15 percent. That year, the company paid nearly $221.1 million in claims while receiving $188.7 in premiums.
Other average rate changes for 2016, including for plans sold off the Idaho health insurance exchange:
Mountain Health COOP: 26 percent
SelectHealth: 15 percent
Regence BlueShield of Idaho: 10 percent
BridgeSpan Health, a sister company of Regence: 7 percent
PacificSource Health Plans: -8 percent
State Insurance Director Dean Cameron said he did not find any proposed rate changes to be unreasonable.
The HHS Dept. reported that exactly 97,079 people had selected private policies in Idaho via their all-new state-based exchange during 2015 Open Enrollment (including the "standing in line" period).
Unlike most states, Idaho chose not to participate in any sort of special tax filing season enrollment period (MA & CO are the other two which didn't do so; every other state is still allowing enrollment for people who had to pay the fine last year and didn't make the cut this year until April 30th, except for WA which cuts things off today and VT which bumped theirs out until the end of May).
While Idaho, like every state, does still allow people to enroll during the off-season if they have a major life change (getting married/divorced, having a baby, moving, losing other coverage, etc), that tends to be cancelled out by other people dropping their coverage for similar reasons.
HAWAII: I was assured 8 ways from Sunday that Hawaii's23,000 enrollee figure was specifically for 2015 enrollment. This made no sense to me given their tiny enrollment last year, but I was assured of it. Well, apparently my original instincts were correct, because they're showing up with only 12,625 in the end.
IDAHO: This is the only state which hasn't given their own enrollment update in forever. According to the prior ASPE report, they were at around 90.5K as of January 17th...yet somehow they only managed to rack up another 6,500 enrollees over the entire final month of Open Enrollment?? I was expecting upwards of 30K or so. This makes zero sense to me...am I missing something here?
In addition, there are a few states where their most recent official enrollment reports had some confusing data, which the ASPE report pretty much trumps regardless of anything else (at least, this is the official number which will be tossed around no matter what anyway):
I'm expecting final official #OE2 enrollment reports from Massachusetts and Minnesota later today, but otherwise have to catch up on a bunch of my actual day job work. Here's three quick things to note:
MARYLAND: The Maryland Health Connection has released a big slideshow PDF with a mountain of demographic info. The only gripe I have is that it only runs through 2/15, so doesn't include the extra folks who signed up during the #ACAOvertime period. Data nerds, rejoice!!
