As you may recall, a week or so ago I ran into a weird discrepancy with the numbers out of a few states. In the case of Vermont, it turned out that the enrollment data they were releasing included both QHPs and Medicaid without distinguishing between the two.
The following numbers are up-to-date as of 11:59pm Monday, January 12, 2015.
New Vermont Health Connect Customers
8,709 individuals have checked out a 2015 health plan. This includes 3,506 individuals in Qualified Health Plans (private health insurance) and 5,203 individuals in Medicaid or Dr. Dynasaur plans.
Vermont: I don't have a 12/15 report from the VT state exchange, but they did release one from 4 days earlier. It claimed 25,867 total QHP selections for 2015. The HHS report says it was 21,709...as of 4 days later. Again, a 4,100 difference.
Today I received my answer: It turns out that until now, the official state exchange enrollment reports were including both QHPs and Medicaid in both the "renewed" and "new" enrollment numbers. Medicaid/CHIP enrollments make up around 7,000 of the total (around 2,800 renewals and 4,300 new).
The broken-out numbers for Vermont, as of last night, directly from my contact at Vermont Health Connect, are as follows:
Vermont Health Connect Open Enrollment and Renewal Update
The following numbers are up-to-date as of 11:59pm Tuesday, December 30, 2014.
Renewals: 23,356 individuals have been checked out into 2015 health plans.
New to Vermont Health Connect: 6,881 individuals have been checked out into 2015 health plans.
Customer Support Center Metrics (Week of Dec. 22-27)
Number of calls: 6,154
Average wait: 14.1 seconds
Number of calls answered in less than 30 seconds: 93.1%
Tracking Progress of New Applications
The following graph shows where new applicants are in the process between submitting their application and being covered by a qualified health plan. Please note that applicants who qualify for Medicaid are not included. The numbers are up-to-date as of Monday, December 29, 2014.
I haven't written much about the recent announcement by Vermont's governor that after years of pushing a single payer plan for the state, he's basically pulled the plug on it (at least for the time being). I noted the announcement but didn't have much to add myself.
Part of this is because I'm swamped with the actual ACA open enrollment itself, of course. Part of it is because it's too depressing a development for me to really think about right now. Part of it is because others far more knowledgeable than I am have much more to say about it.
One such person is Vox's Sarah Kliff, and she's written a fairly definitive explanation of what went wrong. The short version: Vermont's tax base is too small to support the initial costs, even if it would save gobs of money in the longer term.
In Vermont, this is massive: the state only raises $2.7 billion in taxes a year for every program it funds. Early estimates said that Vermont's single-payer plan might need $1.6 billion in additional funds — a huge lift. But $2.5 billion was impossible.
OK, strictly speaking this isn't directly ACA-related, but come on...
Shumlin: "The time is not right"
Vermont has long had a two-pronged approach to building a single-payer health care system. First, they would figure out what they would want the system to look like. Then, they would figure out how to pay for it.
The state passed legislation outlining how the single-payer system would work in 2011. And ever since, the state has been trying to figure out how to pay for a system that covers everybody. Most estimates suggest that the single payer system would cost $2 billion each year. For a state that only collects $2.7 billion in revenue, that is a large sum of money.
What Shumlin appears to be saying today is that the "time is not right" to move forward on the financing of the single-payer system. And that means putting the whole effort aside, with no clear moment when the debate would be reopened.
Ouch.
Thanks to Morgan True for the link to this PowerPoint report which explains why VT is pulling the plug on their ambitious Single Payer attempt:
As you can see from the graphic I posted yesterday (and had to revise several times throughout the day), the official enrollment deadline for private policies starting on January 1st, 2015 has now passed for all 37 states operating via HealthCare.Gov, as well as residents of DC, Hawaii and Kentucky. It's certainly possible that any or all of these will announce some sort of "special circumstances" allowance for those who didn't make the midnight cut-off (10pm in Alaska), but I'm assuming those would be done strictly on a case-by-case basis.
OK, so what about the remaining 11 states?
Well, 4 of them (MD, MA, RI & WA) had later deadlines for January coverage all along: Maryland on 12/18 (Thursday) and the other 3 on 12/23 (next Tuesday).
New York and Idaho bumped their deadlines out from yesterday until 12/20 (Saturday), although Idaho had previously claimed that their deadline was 12/23, but are now claiming that it was originally 12/15. I still don't understand what happened there, but so be it: 12/20 it is for ID.
California’s health insurance exchange extended its deadline for consumers wanting Obamacare coverage in effect by Jan. 1.
Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, said people who start the application process or make some “good faith effort” by Monday will have until Dec. 21 to finish signing up. Monday at midnight had previously been the hard deadline.
“We are providing this window to get people across the finish line,” Lee said at an exchange board meeting Monday. “We know many of the people applying have never had insurance before, and these are individuals who need to sit down and talk with someone.”
Lee said many insurance agents and enrollment counselors were already fully booked with applicants Monday. He said the deadline extension will allow people to make appointments through Dec. 21.
