Charles Gaba's blog

This Just In...the DC exchange has issued their official enrollment report as well (note: remember that this includes the first 2 days of February as well):

DC Health Link Individual Marketplace Data for Third Open Enrollment Period

61% of New Customers are 34 years old and Younger

Washington, DC­­ – Today, the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority (HBX) released preliminary individual marketplace data for the third open enrollment period for DCHealthLink.com, the District’s online health insurance marketplace for individuals, families and small businesses.

The third open enrollment period for individuals and families ended January 31, 2016.  District residents had two extra days to enroll due to the historic snow storm that hit the DC region.   Data includes people enrolling from November 1, 2015 to February 2, 2016.

There are 22,912 customers with 2016 health insurance coverage through DC Health Link’s individual marketplace:

OK. As expected, HHS released the "top line" number for the 2016 Open Enrollment Period: 12.7 million Qualified Health Plan enrollments nationally.

On the one hand, yes, I blew it this year: This is almost exactly 2.0 million fewer than the 14.7 million I originally projected for this year.

HOWEVER, as I've noted many times before, this isn't an apples to apples comparison, because that 12.7 million is after subtracting a minimum of 300,000 cancelled plans (pre-purging). The first two years, any plan cancellations during open enrollment weren't subtracted until after the dust settled; this year, due to improved backend software, CMS was able to purge/remove most cancelled plans from HC.gov on the fly.

In other words, an apples to apples comparison of the actual grand total of QHP selections vs. the same figure last year is at least 13.0 million (actually somewhat higher, since CMS hasn't released the total number of "pre-purges").

• PRELIMINARY numbers since they still have an overtime period
• 100K in final 4 days
• 425K new consumers (295K - 450K target)
• 18-34: 37% of new folks vs. 29% & 34% in first 2 years
• That means better rates/more stable market
• weighted avg. of 4.2% & 4.0% hikes in 2015 & 2016
• 2016 active switchers: reduced premiums by 4.5% on average
• demographic data coming soon
• 1.15 million renewals (vs. 940K renewals last year)
• (me: that's 1.575M QHPs total)
• REMINDER: If you started before 1/31/16, you still have until Saturday night to finish the process

UPDATE: Offiical Press Release:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With three days left for consumers to finish their applications for affordable, quality health care coverage through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Covered California announced that more than 425,000 consumers had made plan selections during its third open-enrollment period.

UPDATE 4:00pm: OK, the HHS call is over now (see notes below), but now I'm on the Covered California call...and my kid gets off the school bus in 10 minutes, so it'll be a bit before I can post a fuller analysis of anything.

OK, everyone, here we go...a press call with the heads of HHS/CMS/HC.gov:

• Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Andy Slavitt, Acting Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
• Kevin Counihan, CEO, Health Insurance Marketplace

Remember, last years' total exchange enrollment was around 11.7 million nationally (8.8 million via HC.gov). HHS's official projection for 2016 was only around 10% higher (officially between 11.0 - 14.1 million, with a midrange around 12.6 million or so), while mine was more ambitious (around 25% higher overall, or 14.7 million).

Some Guy, 11/19/15:

Regular readers know that although I do spend a lot of time updating this website, I do still have to do my day job running a website development firm. As a result, I'm simply not able to keep up with every healthcare-related hot tip which comes my way.

So, when the following link was forwarded to me a few days ago, while I did find out more details from the sender, I didn't happen to get around to actually posting anything about it before today:

UnitedHealthcare Announces Changes to 2016 Exchange Sales and Compensation

Over the past few months, we've seen an acceleration of changes in the health insurance market. UnitedHealthcare is continually evaluating all aspects of the evolving exchanges so that we can provide coverage options that best meet consumers' health care and financial needs.

Coming on top of yesterday's announcement that their state exchange broke the 200,000 QHP enrollment mark this year, Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler has released a new report laying out the uninsured rate for the entire state population:

OLYMPIA, Wash. – The number of people without health insurance in Washington state has dropped from 14.5 percent in 2012 to an estimated 7.3 percent or 522,000 people in 2015, according to a new report issued today by Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler.

Nearly every county in Washington saw a drop in the uninsured

The report highlights the positive impact of the federal Affordable Care Act in Washington with county-by-county data on the uninsured and the law’s effect on many segments of the population.

I just received an update out of the Maryland Health Connection:

As of 2/1, total QHPs are 165,123 (49,377 new + 115,746 renewal-active and passive).

It's important to note that Maryland is still taking OE3 enrollees through Friday via their "In Line by Midnight" extension due to the lingering impact of the snowstorm a couple of weeks back, so MD's final official number will actually be slightly higher than this.

Even without the stragglers, however, Maryland kicked butt again this year, enrolling over 10% more people than the 150K that both they and I were expecting (and even more than my preliminary projection of 163K)...and a whopping 37% higher than 2015's total.

This just in from HealthSource RI:

PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released certain enrollment, demographic and volume data through Saturday, January 31, 2016 for Open Enrollment.

INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT • As of January 31, 2016:

• 34,670 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
• The majority of these individuals are 2015 HSRI enrollees that were auto-renewed into a 2016 plan.
• 7,538 of the 34,670 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.

32,286* of the 34,670 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, and have paid their first month’s premium.
*The number of paid enrollments is expected to increase as individuals pay for March coverage through the February 23 payment deadline. 

Back in November, one of the big ACA stories was UnitedHealthcare, shortly after releasing third quarter financial results which made it sound like all was well with their ACA exchange business, dropping a bombshell only a month later stating that they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars on the exchanges and were very likely to drop out next year.

This caused all sorts of shockwaves among the insurance industry, and of course gave ACA critics more ammunition with which to attack Obamacare as a whole, calling it evidence of the system being a failure, etc etc...even though several other major insurance carriers on the exchanges didn't seem to be complaining (or at least weren't making it out to be nearly as dire of a situation as UHC).

At the end of December, UnitedHealthcare (along with some other carriers) complained about CMS publicly posting their proposed rate increases:

UPDATE: OK, the live stream was over hours ago. I can no longer embed the entire hearing, but here's a direct link to watch it over at C-SPAN's website.

However, just to give you a taste of how jaw-dropping this hearing was, watch Rep. Elijah Cumming's question period with the head of Michigan's Dept. of Environmental Quality:

For a full write-up of the hearing, visit Eclectablog.