ObamaCare Enrollment Week 12 - Nothing New To Report

On Wednesday HHS reported the federally facilitated marketplace (FFM) enrollment figures for Week 12 of the 2015 open enrollment period.

There is little new to report that was not covered in last week’s enrollment update.  As was predicted, as we approach the end of the open enrollment period the rate of enrollment improved by 53.5% from the previous week.  The HHS report indicated that 275,676 additional plans selected during week 12 bringing the cumulative number of plans selected on the FFM to 7,749,375.  If this enrollment rate holds, and accounting for the expected last minute surge in enrollment, the Daily POV best estimate for the total number of plans to be sold through all exchanges by the end of the enrollment period will be just over 11 million. 

If enrollment continues as expected, it is also projected that at very best case 2.2 million uninsured nonelderly will have purchased a qualified healthcare plan through one of the state or federal healthcare marketplaces.  More realistic however is the number of uninsured nonelderly obtaining a healthcare plan through the exchanges this enrollment period to be closer to 1.4 million.

What if we were surprised with a massive last moment enrollment surge?  Hypothetically, if the last week’s enrollment were to be four times that of week 12, the number of uninsured nonelderly obtaining a healthcare plan through the exchanges could be as high as 2.8 million.

Enrollment Numbers by the Week (as reported by HHS)

Here are the enrollment figures HHS has reported for the first 12 weeks of the period:

Week 1  -  462, 125 plans selected, 51% new enrollments (235,684)
Week 2  -  303,010 plans selected, 49% new enrollments (148,475)
Week 3  -  618,548 plans selected, 48% new enrollments (296,903)
Week 4  -  1,082,879 plans selected, 47% new enrollments (508,953)
Week 5  -  3, 927, 484 plans selected, 17% new enrollments (667,672)
Week 6  -  96,446* plans selected
Week 7  -  102,896* plans selected
Week 8  -  163,050* plans selected
Week 9  -  400,253* plans selected
Week 10  -  137,298* plans selected
Week 11  -  179,710* plans selected
Week 12  -  275,676* plans selected
Week 13  - 
* No distinction between new enrollment and renewals provided

With less than 4 days remaining in the 2015 open enrollment period at the time of this writing, we should expect to see the final week’s enrollment figures in just over a week from now, assuming HHS maintains their past reporting schedule.  It’s hard to say when they will release the final enrollment report as they will need input from the 14 states which operate their own exchanges.
 

Breaking Down the Number of Plans Sold

Once all the states chime in and HHS has a moment to put together a rough tally of the total number of plans sold through the exchanges, the claims of success will quickly hit the streets.  If our predictions are correct, the total number of plans sold will be just over 11 million, well in excess of the 9.1 to 9.9 million enrollment projection stated by HHS.  What will be lacking in the mainstream and social liberal media hype is the qualification of the number of plans sold and don’t expect HHS to be volunteering any information either.

From the estimates derived from the My POV Model, here is how the numbers break down:

·         Total number of plans selected *                    11,067,636

·         Plans sold (after attrition) **                          10,291,034

·         Renewals ***                                                  6,499,387

·         Plans sold non-renewals                                  3,791,647

* Assumes week 12 enrollment twice that of week 11 and expands the federal exchange reported figure by 25% to reflect the portion of enrollment that is expected from the state exchanges.
** Adjusted for a 17% attrition rate (as adopted by HHS) on new enrollments only.
*** New enrollments, as reported by HHS expanded by 25% to reflect state marketplace enrollment.

What is left out in the above totals is the number of individuals who were already insured and transferred to the state and federal marketplaces for any number of reasons. 

·         Transfers from other marketplaces (fewest)               1,618,527

·         Transfers from other marketplaces (realistic)              2,382,928

And when you reduce the “plans sold non-renewals” by the number of other marketplace transfers, what remains is the number of plans purchased by the uninsured nonelderly, 2.2 million on the high side and 1.4 million on the low end.

Of course, the next question is, where did we come up with the number of “other marketplace” transfers?  A simple enough question to answer.

The bulk of the off exchange transfers come from employer plan cancelations.  A second round if private policy cancelations also attributed to the large number of off exchange transfers as did the states of Nevada and Oregon closing their states exchanges.

·         Employer plan cancelations  -  A survey of insurers conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management reviled that 1% or 964,000 employer provided healthcare plans would be canceled at the end of the 2014 insurance period.  This count does not including spouses and children which when included will significantly increase this figure.

 

·         Private policy cancelations  -  348,914 private policy cancelations were identified in 9 of the 13 states whose insurers sent out cancelation notices near the end of 2014.  As not all states require insurers to publically report cancellations nor are all states required to do so, it is likely that the actual cancelation number exceeds 500,000.

 

·         State exchange closures  -  Nevada and Oregon have thrown in the towel in trying to get their states exchanges functioning properly and have deferred to the federally managed healthcare exchange for individual enrollment for 2015.  The number insured by these states in 2014 was 105,000 all of which are expected to have renewed their plans through the federally managed healthcare marketplace.

Certainly every policy canceled may not have resulted in a transfer to the state and federal exchanges but the alternative would be the canceled individual would then be uninsured, an action counterproductive to ObamaCare and from a numbers standpoint creates a net zero gain or loss, therefore we will assume a 100% transfer rate for simplicity.

The above listed off exchange transfers do not include the 200,000 late renewals or any other off exchange transfer that did not fall in the three categories listed.

Unless it is discovered that a gross error in the number of off exchange transfers exists, the predicted best and likely cases of 2.2 million and 1.4 million uninsured nonelderly enrollment projections appear to be the sad truth to a healthcare law that now looks to be roughly 9 million short of its second year marketplace target.