At this point, the only significant top-line 2018 Open Enrollment numbers missing are the final 10 days out of California (which could add perhaps 40,000 to the total) and a solid month of enrollment from the District of Columbia (23 days, actually, but they extended their deadline by 5 extra days, which may or may not be included in the final, official report from CMS). DC's tally through 1/08 was 21,352 QHP selections. Their all-time high was around 22,700 set in 2016, so I can't imagine that they added more than perhaps 2,000 more since 1/08. In other words, about 99.5% of the 2018 OEP QHP selections have likely been accounted for.
That means it's time to move on to...breaking down the demographic data! Woo-hoo! Parrrr-tyyyy!!
The big, official CMS report from the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) presumably won't be released for a couple of weeks, but some of the state-based exchanges are faster about posting their demographics. First up: Connecticut!
LT. GOV. WYMAN: DEMAND FOR HEALTH INSURANCE ROSE, 2018 OPEN ENROLLMENT STRONGER THAN PREVIOUS YEARS
(HARTFORD, Conn.) – Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman and Access Health CT (AHCT) CEO Jim Wadleigh today provided the results of the Connecticut healthcare exchange’s fifth open enrollment period, which ran from November 1 to December 22, 2017. During this open enrollment cycle, 114,134 residents signed up for private health insurance coverage, reflecting a 2.3 percent increase compared to enrollment figures 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.
I'm assuming whoever posted the update simply forgot to also update the "as of" date; presumably it's as of yesterday (December 14th), but I've put in a request for clarification.
UPDATE: Yup, they've since corrected the date to read 12/15/17 (basically, as of this morning I presume).
It's important to note that today is not the deadline for Connecticut residents to enroll; AccessHealthCT's deadline isn't until next Friday, December 22nd.
This means they added 1,613 more people in the past week, but the pool of current enrollees dropped by 1,675, which means that at least a small number have actively cancelled their policies altogether. Looked at another way, the number of new enrollees has increased by 3,211 (from 11,749 to 14,960), which means that, again, a couple thousand current enrollees who either actively (or were passively) auto-renewed have since gone back into the system and changed their mind and cancelled their 2018 plans. This is normal, especially for the states which "front-load" auto-renewals before the December deadline passes.
They've also done something interesting: They're listing the 11,055 current enrollees who haven't actively re-enrolled as of yet. If every one of them did so (they won't), that would bring the grand total up to 101.4K.
Not much of an update, but good to see a hard number officially posted at AccessHealthCT (I assume they'll be updating this regularly from the looks of it):
That same day in Connecticut [Wednesday, Nov. 1st], 1,596 residents enrolled in qualified health plans on the state exchange while another 2,293 people either completed Medicaid applications or determined that they were eligible for that program. Access Health CT CEO Jim Wadleigh said in a statement that the state’s call center and website experienced a 15 percent increase in volume compared to opening day last year.
Not much to add here; last year the first enrollment number I had for Connecticut didn't show up until halfway through November (about 16,000 selections in 15 days), but that doesn't give me much to compare with for the first day only. Still, the 15% traffic increase is a good thing.
