Charles Gaba's blog

The final December tally for Rhode Island is in, and also gives a clearer picture of the "But how many have PAID???" talking point. As of New Year's Eve, 11,305 people had enrolled in a plan, of which 2,300 still hadn't paid as of 2 days ago. That means that at least 80% of RI private exchange enrollees are paid in full. No new Medicaid numbers in the article.

Depending on your POV, this also means that Rhode Island has also now hit either 94% (if you're counting unpaid enrollments) or 75% (if you're not) of their 12,000 CBO projection for 3/31/14. See this story for additional discussion.

Monday night, HealthSource RI, the Obamacare marketplace in Rhode Island, sent emails to 2,300 people who had not paid as of Jan. 5 to tell them they had until 4 p.m. on Jan. 8 to pay the first month's premium, and their plans will still be effective retroactive to Jan. 1.

HealthSource RI reported Monday that 11,305 people selected plans as of the Dec. 31 deadline, but not all had paid.

Yesterday, Theda Skocpol of Harvard University cited the data at this site in a brief about state progress in implenting the Affordable Care Act posted at the Scholars Strategy Network website. This brief--particularly the accompanying visual graph--was in turn cited in articles posted at both Talking Points Memo and Mother Jones. The gist of both the brief as well as these articles is that the states which have been cooperating with the ACA have been far more successful in enrolling people in both private insurance plans as well as publicly-funded plans such as Medicaid, SCHIP and related state-run programs.

Connecticut, the first state to exceed their March 31 enrollment deadline back on December 23rd, continues to keep their momentum up, adding at least another 12,000 people to their rolls since the 12/23 deadline for January coverage. The article doesn't distinguish between private plans and Medicaid expansion, so I've broken it out roughtly 55/45 for now to match their previous numbers.

This brings CT up to nearly 41,000 private enrollments and over 33,000 added to Medicaid/CHIP.

Many state residents are aware that enrollment is still open, as Counihan said enrollment through Access Health CT has remained strong over the past week or so.

"We're still doing a thousand a day," Counihan said. "I would have thought that, after Dec. 23, things would have really dipped."

The Vermont numbers have been alternately impressive and confusing at the same time.  The wording of a prior article from 12/12 made it sound like the 45,000 (at the time) people were split between private enrollments and Medicaid expansion, but also made reference to 29,200 people being enrolled "directly via their employer". At the time, I wasn't sure what to do with that number, so I ignored it. However, the more recent article again references the same 29,200 people; after comparing the 2 articles, it seems pretty clear to me that these would fall under the category of "direct" or "off-exchange" enrollees (although they also might fit under "small business exchange enrollments", which is a category I haven't even added yet). Add this to the 22,800 private exchange enrollments and you have 52K total.

In a December 23rd interview with the Des Moines Register, CoOportunity Health (1 of 2 companies participating in IA's ACA exchange (and 1 of 3 participating in NE) said they had enrolled 2,577 people in private plans in Iowa via the HC.gov exchange as of 12/20. However, they also mentioned a total of 8,583 enrollments state-wide as of 12/20, meaning another 6,006 people were enrolled directly through the company, bypassing the exchange completely.

I contacted Leigh McGivern, the PR representative for CoOportunity Health, who informed me that CoOportunity operates in Nebraska as well, and gave me more recent and detailed numbers for both states: 3,468 exchange-based enrollments (not sure if this is people or households) in Iowa, and another 7,362 exchange-based enrollments in Nebraska.

(Note: The spreadsheet numbers for IA & NE were actually updated with this data a couple of weeks ago, but it took me this long to get around to writing up the explanation)

In a December 23rd interview with the Des Moines Register, CoOportunity Health (1 of 2 companies participating in IA's ACA exchange (and 1 of 3 participating in NE) said they had enrolled 2,577 people in private plans via the HC.gov exchange as of 12/20. However, they also mentioned a total of 8,583 enrollments state-wide as of 12/20, meaning another 6,006 people were enrolled directly through the company, bypassing the exchange completely.

I contacted Leigh McGivern, the PR representative for CoOportunity Health, who informed me that CoOportunity operates in Nebraska as well, and gave me more recent and detailed numbers for both states: 3,468 exchange-based enrollments (not sure if this is people or households) in Iowa, and another 7,362 exchange-based enrollments in Nebraska.

No new numbers today, but being cooped up with a bit of a cold and an oncoming major snowstorm/Big Chill is giving me a bit of time to clean up/update the website and spreadsheet formatting:

One more update in Oregon, and it's a substantial one despite their severe technical issues: The Oregonian reports a 22% increase in state signups , from the previous totals of 14,700 private and 32,000 Medicaid enrollments. Journalist Nick Budnick, who has written numerous articles on the Oregon health exchange’s non-functioning website, also confirms the correctness of the additional Medicaid figure.

The final tally on enrollment through Oregon's health exchange by Jan. 1 topped 50,000, according to Cover Oregon. More than 18,000 people enrolled in commercial or private insurance, according to Cover Oregon spokesman Michael Cox, while more than 32,000 people enrolled in the Medicaid-funded Oregon Health Plan.

...The exchange's enrollment figure does not include more than 100,000 people who were enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan using a streamlined process set up by the state to bypass Cover Oregon.

It was just brought to my attention that there's a story in today's L.A. Times that mentions my name and this site several times. Given that the site has received quite an uptick in traffic and attention the past week or so, I just wanted to welcome new visitors, ask you to please read the FAQ and also stress a few additional points:

  • No, I don't guarantee that my numbers are accurate. I'm fairly confident of them, but my data is only as good as that of my sources, which are a variety of local & national news media websites as well as official state & federal government reports/media releases. If their data is wrong, mine will be as well, though I do the best I can to double-check any numbers which seem suspicious.
  • A few of the spreadsheet cells are color-coded; scroll to the bottom of the page for explanations of those.
  • Other numbers are italicized; those are either verified as being unpaid or are otherwise questionable (Massachusetts has a pretty messed-up situation at the moment).
  • Numbers that don't have any source link mean that they come from the official monthly HHS Dept. report (whcih currently only runs through 11/30/13).
  • At the right side of the spreadsheet is a "Notes" column; I'm currently in the process of changing this to direct links to the corresponding blog entries about that state. This will help simplify the spreadsheet as well as allowing me to go into detailed explanations for the entries.

Otherwise, thanks for visiting!

Massachusetts is a mess. I've been debating how to handle this; for private enrollments, it looks like I need to combine 497 subsidized, 3,262 unsubsidized (the previous number) and 22K temporary plans, which are apparently qualified/approved but haven't been processed yet. This adds up to 25,759 total, but the article refers to a lower number of 24,256. Given the confusion, I'm using that as the total and listing it below the other number in italics, which I normally use for "unpaid" enrollments. This brings the new tally to 3,759 fully enrolled and 20,497 "semi-enrolled"...I think.

The Medicaid number is more straightforward: 130K transferred automatically from a state-run public health program over to Medicaid proper.

As of Dec. 30, only 497 people had successfully enrolled in new subsidized health plans throughMassachusetts' health connector.

State officials have put another 22,000 people on temporary insurance plans, paid for by the state, while the connector processes coverage applications.

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