In spite of their endless technical issues, Oregon is actually kicking serious butt in manually processing a mountain of paper applications. In addition, they're including some interesting extra info in their reports lately--including NET enrollments after cleaning out cancellations/etc (does this mean Oregon is now only including paid enrollments, then, like MA and WA??), as well as dental enrollments, which haven't gotten much attention from anyone:
Medical enrollments through Cover Oregon: 175,534
Total private medical insurance enrollments through Cover Oregon1: 52,654
Oregon Health Plan enrollments through Cover Oregon: 122,880
Dental enrollments
Total private dental insurance enrollments through CoverOregon 1: 10,628
Net enrollments Net private medical2: 50,137
Net private dental 2: 9,877
OK, the cutesy title is kind of a misnomer; my two previous entries didn't use that title originally...but they should have, and do now.
March 31st is supposed to be the final day to enroll in QHPs via the exchanges...but it's looking more and more as though that won't quite be the case in not two, not three...but possibly up to seven states now, including a couple whose websites have been working smooth as silk??
On March 7th I pointed out that due to Massachusetts having some 154,000 people stuck in health insurance limbo, they've been granted some sort of temporary extension, twice...out to as far as June 30th in some cases...
Cover Oregon just posted an unexpected update (wasn't expecting this until tomorrow). They've added a couple of very interesting new features this week: First, they've started including dental policies, which has been pretty much ignored by everyone (including myself). I think Kentucky is the only other state that I've seen call any attention to the dental plans.
Of more interest to me for this site, however, is the fact that they've added net enrollments, explaining that these are the final number after people have "cancelled or terminated" their accounts. They don't specify the reasons for these terminations/cancellations (is it by the customer due to a change in status? is it by the exchange or insurance company for nonpayment?), but it's still a good thing overall as it helps give a truer picture of the situation.
A couple of weeks ago I pointed out that at least two states, Massachusetts and Oregon, may end up extending their enrollment period beyond the official March 31st "deadline" due to their exchange websites still being partially or completely hosed.
In Massachusetts' case, there's about 219,000 people currently stuck in coverage limbo; the HHS Dept. has granted an extension of some sort to as far out as June 30th to get these people squared away, although I'm pretty sure the extension only applies to those folks, not anyone who's just trying to enroll now...but that's still a hell of a lot of people.
Contributor Maurice H. provides a bit of Off-Exchange data from Oregon. He contacted Oregon's Health CO-OP and while they didn't provide exact numbers, they were willing to provide their on-exchange/off-exchange ratios:
Oregon’s Health CO-OP is not sharing specific enrollment numbers, but is happy to give you the percentages of on and off Exchange:
On – 42% / Off—58%
Hope that helps.
Fortunately, an article in the Oregonian by the authority on all things Cover Oregon-related, Nick Budnick, provides the other piece of the puzzle:
Policies as of March 6th / Oregon's Health CO-OP: 212
Hmmm. Well, if 212 is 42% of the co-op's total enrollments, that makes off-exchange enrollments...505 people.
OK, not exactly a huge number, but an enrollment is an enrollment...noting it...
Considering that their exchange website is still a complete mess, Oregon is actually doing a pretty good job of processing enrollments (not sure how many of these are newly added or reducing the backlog of older ones, not that it matters). Private QHPs are up almost 2,800 over last week, and Medicaid enrollees are up over 8,700.
In fact, so far, Oregon's March QHP enrollment rate (526/day) is actually nearly triple what it was in February (179/day). If every state were to pull this off, the total would actually surpass 7 million after all, though that doesn't seem likely at the moment.
Update: Private coverage and Oregon Health Plan enrollment through Cover Oregon
Total: 145,941 Private insurance: 45,119
Oregon Health Plan: 100,822
UPDATE: On the down side, I was off by 4% this time around.
On the up side, I UNDERESTIMATED:
Actual Feb. enrollments: 942,833, for a total of 4,242,325 thru 3/01/14.
Sarah Kliff at Vox just announced that the February HHS report is expected to be released today at around 4:00pm. A few items in anticipation of that:
As I've noted several times, I'm projecting the report to total around 902,000 exchange-based private QHP enrollments for the month of February (technically 2/02 - 3/01)
If accurate, this would bring the cumulative total of exchange-based private QHP enrollments to 4.202 million (from 10/1/13 - 3/01/14)
From the data I have, the average daily enrollment rate in February was almost identical to that of January, which had about 1.146 million QHP enrollments. HOWEVER, the January report included five weeks of data (12/28 - 2/01), while the February report will only include four weeks (2/02 - 3/01). Therefore, even at the same daily average, it'll be about 20% lower no matter what.
Don't be surprised if Peter Lee of CoveredCA decides to steal some thunder by announcing that California has enrolled 1,000,000 QHPs all by itself either today or tomorrow. However, that would include the past 10 days, while the HHS number will only run thru 3/01.
If you want to get REALLY specific, call it 902,800 and 4,202,292.
I've been dead-on target 6 times in a row without hyping up my projections beforehand. This time I am hyping myself up beforehand, so I'll probably be way off...but as long as I've UNDERestimated the tally, I'll be perfectly fine with that...
The report will be released in about 5 minutes, but my kid gets home from school in about 10, so it'll be a good 20 minutes before I can really post anything. Feel free to follow Sarah Kliff of Vox in the meantime!
Well, Oregon's website may still be a complete disaster, but their manual enrollment process seems to be chugging along fairly well. Private QHPs are up 3,500 from 38,806 a week earlier, while Medicaid enrollments are up another 7,100 from 84,991.
Note that they've finally stopped including the "Fast Track" Medicaid numbers, presumably because they've already enrolled everyone they could find via that route:
March 7, 2014
Update: Private coverage and Oregon Health Plan enrollment through Cover Oregon
Total: 134,412 Private insurance: 42,325
Oregon Health Plan: 92,087
Update: Something else very interesting about Oregon's situation. Take a look at their QHP enrollment history:
12/28: 18,337
02/01: 33,808 (15,471 in 35 days, or 442 per day)
02/28: 38,806 (4,998 in 27 days, or just 185 per day...a 58% drop per day, ouch!)
However, today they announced the number, as of (I presume) yesterday, the 6th, as:
Last month there was news out of Massachusetts of some sort of extension being granted to "bring the state’s health care system in line" with ACA regulations. At the time I didn't pay much attention to it, thinking that it only related to administrative procedures or somesuch.
However, it turns out that there's actually 154,000 people who are currently enrolled in a sort of healthcare batter's box, being placed on hold until MA's screwed-up exchange is able to absorb them into the system via proper ACA-compliant QHPs (or Medicaid/CHIP...not sure about that yet):
Unable to immediately enroll applicants in new, private plans under the Affordable Care Act, state officials extended existing state coverage for about 124,000 individuals, and granted temporary state coverage to about 30,000 new applicants. Those individuals were supposed to move onto new plans by March. 31; the federal waiver gives officials another three months to do that.
So why am I bringing this up today, 3 weeks after that story broke? Because a contributor called my attention to this story out of Oregon:
Oregon continues to slowly drag their still-crippled exchange along, adding another 2,859 private QHPs and 22,564 Medicaid/CHIP enrollees (17,474 + 5,090 via the "Fast Track" program) over the past few weeks.
March 1, 2014 Update: Private coverage and Oregon Health Plan enrollment through Cover Oregon and Oregon Health Authority
Total: 123,797
Private insurance: 38,806
Oregon Health Plan: 84,991
Oregon Health Authority “Fast Track”
Oregon Health Plan: 128,434
OK, the cutesy title is kind of a misnomer; my two previous entries didn't use that title originally...but they should have, and do now.
Cover Oregon just posted an unexpected update (wasn't expecting this until tomorrow). They've added a couple of very interesting new features this week: First, they've started including dental policies, which has been pretty much ignored by everyone (including myself). I think Kentucky is the only other state that I've seen call any attention to the dental plans.
