More than 4 in 5 enrolled in Obamacare are in Trump states
WASHINGTON — Americans in states that Donald Trump carried in his march to the White House account for more than 4 in 5 of those signed up for coverage under the health care law the president still wants to take down.
An Associated Press analysis of new figures from the government found that 7.3 million of the 8.8 million consumers signed up so far for next year come from states Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. The four states with the highest number of sign-ups — Florida, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia, accounting for nearly 3.9 million customers — were all Trump states.
Yes, this is true: ~7.3 million out of 8.8 million, or roughly 83%, of enrollees in the 39 states covered by HealthCare.Gov do indeed reside in states won by Donald Trump last year.
Open enrollment on the state’s health care exchange, Access Health Connecticut, ends Friday at midnight.
Connecticut residents had one week longer to sign up for an insurance plan than customers of the federal site, healthcare.gov.
As of Thursday morning, some 106,000 people had signed up for health care plans through Access Health CT.
Exchange CEO Jim Wadleigh called this the most challenging open enrollment period in the five years it’s been up and running, citing uncertainty over the future of the health care law, mixed messages from the Trump administration, and the shortest enrollment period ever, at just seven weeks.
Just yesterday MNsure issued an unofficial tally of 106,000 QHP selections through 12/19. Yesterday also happened to be their December deadline for coverage starting in January, although their Open Enrollment Period still runs through January 14th.
Today they updated the number officially, including the final mid-season deadline:
Total enrollments for 2018 now 12.5 percent ahead of where they were this time last year
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Following the first deadline for 2018 coverage, 108,540 Minnesotans have enrolled in private health coverage through MNsure. Yesterday, December 20, was the deadline for coverage beginning January 1. Minnesotans have until January 14 to sign up for coverage starting February 1, 2018.
Last year after the first deadline, MNsure had 96,540 enrollments, putting this year 12,000 enrollments ahead of last year at this time, or 12.5 percent.
Now that it appears that the full list of states and counties eligible for hurricane (or windstorm, in the case of Maine) Special Enrollment Periods (SEP) has settled down, Huffington Post reporter Jonathan Cohn asked an interesting question:
How if at all do you allow for the extensions in FL, TX, etc.? Or, to put another way, how many post-Dec 15 signups through https://t.co/bhGNSognZK do you expect?
The closest parallel to this particular situation I can think of was the #ACATaxTime SEP back in spring 2015. In that case, it was the first year that the ACA's (defunct as of this morning) Individual Mandate was being enforced, and a lot of people either never got the message about being required to #GetCovered or at least pretended that they didn't.
Their record to date was last year, when they had a total of 266,664 QHP selections through January 31st, 2017...and unlike most states, the deadline in MA is still a month away (residents have until 12/23 to enroll for January coverage and until 1/23/18 to enroll for February coverage).
This gives Massachusetts a full 5 weeks to add at least 4,400 more people to break that record. They've added 2,487 in the past 13 days; if they kept that pace they'd add 6,685 more between now and 1/23, so it's not unreasonable to think they can pull that off.
UPDATE: OK, it looks like the big HealthCare.Gov Final Surge Report is gonna be released sometime Thursday morning. Unfortunately, I have a can't-miss meeting in the morning as well, so there's a good chance that after sitting at my desk and constantly refreshing/checking email all day today, I may ironically end up missing the big reveal and not being able to post about it for an hour or so after it comes out.
UPDATE 12/21/17: As of 2:00pm, still nothing. Speculation now brewing that they may be hoping to bury the report at 4:59pm on the Friday before Christmas. Hoping to be proven wrong.
UPDATE 2:35pm: h/t to Adam Sacarny for the head's up:
Exchange open enrollment for 2018 coverage ended w/ approx 8.8M people enrolling in coverage. Great job to the @CMSGov team for the work you did to make this the smoothest experience for consumers to date. We take pride in providing great customer service.
Not an official enrollment update report but close enough (via email from MNsure):
December 20, 2017
Today is the last day for Minnesotans to sign up for health coverage beginning January 1
ST. PAUL, Minn.—Today is the last day for Minnesotans to sign up for health coverage beginning January 1, 2018. Over the last few days, and including the start of today, MNsure has been very busy. Yesterday, there were over 50,000 MNsure.org sessions and MNsure fielded over 5,000 calls. Today is off to a strong start as well, with nearly 21,000 MNsure.org sessions and over 2,200 calls.
To date, MNsure has enrolled over 106,000 Minnesotans in health coverage for 2018 and the average tax credit for Minnesota families is over $7,000 a year.
MNsure.org will remain available for consumers to shop until midnight and the contact center will remain open till midnight as well. Any calls on hold at midnight will be answered.
If Minnesotans do not apply for health coverage by midnight tonight, they can still get coverage beginning February 1, 2018 if they apply by January 14, 2018.
BUSY DAY: I was expecting the big Week 7 HC.gov Snapshot Report to come out this morning, but it hasn't been released yet. Instead, I have major updates from the three largest state-based exchanges: New York, California and now Washington State...and of the three, WA is the most impressive:
Washington Healthplanfinder Sign-Ups Jump Past 230,000, Shatter Last Year’s Record Pace
Final deadline for remaining customers to select 2018 health and dental coverage is Jan. 15
The Washington Health Benefit Exchange today announced that more than 230,000 customers selected health plans through Washington Healthplanfinder by the Dec. 15 deadline for coverage that begins on Jan. 1. Customers who have not yet applied for coverage still have until Jan. 15 to sign up for health and dental plans that begin on Feb. 1.
Covered California just announced their latest 2018 Open Enrollment Period numbers:
220,000 new enrollees as of 12/15 (10% higher than last year)
Extended Jan. start deadline to 12/22 to handle high demand
Final deadline still same as last year (1/31/18)
~1.2 million active or passive renewals
~1.4 million total enrollees (renewals + new enrollments)
Assuming the 1.2 million figure is very close to the exact number, that makes the total number around 1.42 million QHP selections.
This brings CoveredCA within 9% of last year's total, and within 10% of their all-time total set a year earlier.
The official total as of 12/17 last year (with an extra 2 days) was 1,437,150 enrollments, about 1% higher. Given that CoveredCA is keeping to the same January 31st deadline as prior years, I'm pretty sure they'll end up very close to last year's final total when the dust settles.
For context, as of 12/17/16, New York had enrolled 213,248 people in Qualified Health Plans (QHPs), putting them over 7% ahead of the same point last year...and unlike most states, New York's Open Enrollment Period is just as long as prior years, running all the way out to January 31st.
Put another way: New York's final enrollment tally last year was 242,880, meaning they're just 6% away from breaking that number with six weeks left to go. Their all-time record was set in OE2 with 409,000 QHP selections, but that's a meaningless comparison since the Essential Plan was added the following year, cannibalizing several hundred thousand enrollees anyway.
