Every month I post an entry about the official CMS Medicaid enrollment report, documenting the increase in Medicaid enrollment since ACA expansion went into effect. The numbers were increasing dramatically every month for nearly two years, but started slowing down last fall as most of the expansion states started maxing out on their eligible enrollees. I wrote about the August 2016 report back on 11/20, and normally would be writing about the September report today. Instead, however, I'm skipping right past September, because the preliminary report for October was just released today:
UPDATE: Denis Byron, in the comments below, claims that Ryan Cooper's story (and therefore, mine) is "incredibly deceptive" and that I should be "ashamed" of myself for basing this entry on it. I've contacted Cooper about Byron's claims and will update the article if Cooper responds. Byron is correct that I am by no means a Medicare expert, so I'll leave it at that for the moment.
UPDATE 12/31: A few folks in the comments have noted that a) pre-existing condition denials aren't an issue for most group policies even without the ACA and b) some of the professions listed below don't appear to belong on the list since those groups should be guaranteed coverage anyway (ie, the VA/TriCare for those in the military; members of police/firefighter unions and so on). Both KFF and I have already addressed the first point (yes, they're covered now but if they lose their job for any reason they'd likely be screwed; thus, the "...if they were to lose their current coverage" caveat). As for the second one, I've asked Larry Levitt & Cynthia Cox of the KFF to clarify.
Update 12/31: I've received clarification from Larry Levitt re. the 2nd criticism: "I suspect insurers were mostly being overly cautious just in case. Active duty military would be covered otherwise. Police and fire generally would, but possibly not in small towns or volunteer firefighters."
Remember, the ACA's Medical Loss Ratio rule (80% of all premiums have to go towards actual healthcare, leaving only a 20% maximum margin for administrative/operational costs) already does a pretty good job of keeping carriers from outright gouging enrollees...although that only comes into play when the carriers would otherwise be spending less than 80% on healthcare claims. In cases where they're already spending more than 80%, it's kind of moot...and for the past couple of years, many carriers are at 100% or higher, which is the main reason some of them are pulling out of the market next year in the first place.
In other words, unlike other "retail" markets where more competition is generally considered to automatically help keep prices down, there's only so much that more players can do in the individual health insurance market. If everyone is already losing money, adding one more to the mix isn't gonna make anyone else drop their rates further.
I just noted this morning that Rhode Island's enrollment numbers for 2017 are coming up significantly short of not only my own admittedly unrealistic hopes (I was hoping RI would buck the national trend and beef up enrollment by 15% this year), but is likely to actually come up lower than last year's 33.9K by several thousand people.
Fortunately, the opposite is proving to be the case in Massachusetts:
Through yesterday, we had 240,745 enrolled in January 2017 coverage...these are people who paid their bill. There are an additional 11,803 people who selected a plan but haven't paid for it yet. That's a total of 252,548.
That's, 252,548 QHP selections as of 12/28/16, of which over 95% have actually paid their first monthly premium (well above the 90% payment national average).
Rhode Island is one of three states (along with Washington and Massachusetts) which allowed people to enroll for January coverage as late as December 23rd. RI's numbers have also included auto-renewals for some time now, so today's report includes everyone whose 2017 policies will kick off effective this Sunday, January 1st:
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT • As of December 24, 2016
Oof. I've been compiling a lot of charts and graphs the past week or so based on what I thought were the most comprehensive 2017 enrollment numbers available to date. The biggest data gaps are Vermont and New York, neither of which has released any enrollment data yet...or so I thought.
In the past three days, more than 55,000 New Yorkers have enrolled or renewed coverage through NY State of Health. The Customer Service Center has answered more than 1,000,000 calls since the start of Open Enrollment on November 1 and an average of 46,000 calls a day this week. The NY State of Health website has also experienced high traffic reaching 12,000 users in peak hours.
...This is also the first time this enrollment period that NYSoH has released any actual enrollment data: 55,000 renewals + new signups. Unfortunately, that number only includes 12/12 - 12/14...no earlier numbers are included. Still, I'll take what I can get...
The last hard enrollment number I had for Connecticut was 108,105 people enrolled through December 13, just 2 days before the original deadline for January coverage. However, like most states, CT bumped their deadline out an extra few days, so they ended up with 4 more days to sign people up before the January cut-off. It turns out they tacked on another 5,000 people in that time:
Access Health CT, the organization responsible for enrolling people in Obamacare, did not release numbers on how many people are enrolled in policies that take effect Jan. 1. Instead, they released a combined number of who's enrolled now and who will be enrolled next year: 113,161.
...Access Health CT noted that nearly 12,000 people who are currently enrolled are in plans that will not exist next year and are therefore not covered. They can still re-enroll, but they'll have a gap in coverage in January.
At this point in 2015, 100,314 people were scheduled to have Obamacare insurance coverage on Jan. 1, 2016.
With the HHS Dept. having just released the total number of 2017 Open Enrollment Period enrollees through the extended December deadline, I've been seeing a lot of comments on Twitter along the following:
Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia highest Obamacare enrollees... lol... Trumpers should have listened!#ACA#lawrenceodonnell
There could be a light at the end of a dark tunnel for Obamacare insurers.
Health insurers may finally be seeing improved results on their Obamacare plans just as a newly elected president is poised to follow through on promises to end the controversial coverage program, a new report suggests.
An analysis out Thursday says that health insurers are expected in 2016 "to start reversing" financial losses on their Obamacare business after "hitting bottom" in 2015.
And 2017 "will likely see continued improvement" for those insurers selling individual health plans, "with more insurers getting close to breakeven or better," according to the report by Standard and Poor's Global Ratings.
The report also says big price increases for Obamacare plans in 2017 were likely a "one-time pricing correction."
