This has turned into a liveblog of ACA Signups.
Exchange QHP Projection, 10/1/13 - 3/31/14: 7.08M
Enrollment Period Elapsed: 100.0%
Original 7M CBO Exchange QHP Projection Reached: 101.1%
Previously brainwrap had a slightly lower projection. I wrote:
Obamacare is working better than expected. On its original deadline day:
Exchange QHP Projection, 10/1/13 - 3/31/14: 6.9 - 7.0M
and counting according to our better-than-Nate-Silver (so says Paul Krugman) brainwrap. He has been bumping up that projection daily since the final #ACASurge began. And got bigger. And the lines went around the block (pics in yesterday's Diary). And still kept growing. We might have an idea as early as tomorrow how many applications are continuing into the extension period. Cue Republican whinging about how many will be completed and then how many will be paid for, as though we hadn't already done those problems.
This is a big problem for Republicans today. Like Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia, only this sorcerer means it. There have been some good Diaries about their flailing responses, such as "cooking the books" (links below).
For the rest of us, the deadline day for Open Enrollment under the Affordable Care Act is not going to be all that big a deal. There are two reasons why. The one that matters most for the uninsured and underinsured is the two-week extension, but the problem for us in these Diaries is that we won't get the enrollment numbers from most states for weeks.
Which is to say, never mind 7 million! How much higher can we get in two more weeks? And when can we find out we did it? So we also got this:
I'm actually pretty confident that we'll hit somewhere between 7.5–8 million *by April 15*, anyway.
from brainwrap, in a comment on ACA Signups.
Delaying the Numbers
You might assume, if you had any experience with, say, Google Analytics, that the Exchange software would have been written to provide instantaneous snapshots of activity and immediate reports of signups at every stage. Don't Amazon and eBay and PayPal and your bank have real-time reporting systems? Where would we be without instantaneous numbers from the financial markets? Yes, they do, but you would be wrong in applying this reasonable assumption to the government, where our only (feeble) protection from cronyism by Republicans is forcing Democratic administrations to contract with the lowest bidder. We are lucky healthcare.gov works at all. More precisely, I mean that we are lucky that when we were able to hire competent developers under emergency rules, it turned out that healthcare.gov did not have to be abandoned, that it was still fixable. Several state exchanges, such as Oregon, Nevada, and Maryland, by major contractors like Oracle and Xerox, have had to be abandoned (and may still have to be paid for!)
You might also assume that the reporting systems would categorize transactions in various useful ways, and allow them to be queried, so that we could find out how many people tried to apply for policies on an Exchange, and how many got through each stage, at least up to the handoff to the insurance company, and preferably through payment and issuance of policies. Also how many Medicaid recipients getting signed up were newly qualified, or "woodworkers" (previously qualified, but only now coming out of the woodwork to enroll), or just reclassifications and renewals. You would be wrong there, too. Business calls that data mining, and some live or die by it. Not government, which cannot die, and they won't ever do it unless we keep demanding it at the ballot box.
Decreasing the Number of Uninsured
The question has been raised, how the ACA is expected to do in years to come after we get through the present ginned-up crisis? Here is another estimate from the Congressional Budget Office. This leaves 30 million uninsured in 2017, and suggests that that is about where we will remain until we get a chance to revisit health care with healthy Democratic majorities, a Democratic President, and preferably a sane majority on the Supreme Court.
Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act—CBO’s February 2014 Baseline
Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Insurance Coverage
(Millions of uninsured nonelderly people, by calendar year)
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
45 |
37 |
31 |
30 |
Around the Twitterverse
#ACA
#ACASurge
#GetCovered
Bennie Wiley @BennieWiley 3h
#Republicans love #Obamacare when U don't call it that #ACA #ACASurge #healthcare #health #GetCovered #uniteblue #P2 pic.twitter.com/hErfajLLat
Other ACA Surge Diaries
Foxwatch: Admin "cooked the books" on ACA enrollment
Now the Campaign Begins
GOP always feared Obamacare's success, not its failure
Obamacare support edges opposition for first time in ABC-Washington Post poll
Americans register for health care in droves
Take heart Republicans. You've kept millions of kids from getting health coverage
Obamacare deadline spurs sign-up surge
How to Lie With Statistics: Fox News on ACA enrollments
ACASIGNUPS.NET Prediction: 7 Million could be signed up by midnight today.
UPDATE: ACA Signups: I just got to turn down FOX News
Two quick things:
First, I wanted to thank Mokurai for taking on the burden of posting daily updates on the ongoing saga of ACASignups.net until things settle down over there (things are a bit crazy right now). [No worries, mate.]
When you see his posts with "ACA Signups" in the title, please Rec them if you would do so for one of mine; consider him my surrogate for the moment, thanks! :) [162 tips and 109 comments yesterday, so no worries there, either.]
Second, I just had to spill this one myself: Five minutes after getting off the phone with NPR (All Things Considered), my home line rang. My wife informed me "It's FOX News, should I hang up on them?"
I thought about it for a minute, then sighed and said "No, let me talk to them."
It was a very pleasant-sounding woman who first confirmed my identity, then invited me to appear on one of their stupid shows (I can't remember which one, frankly).
I politely declined (it's not her fault, after all, I assume she's some booking assistant) and asked them not to call my home number again.
Anyway, it's kind of a busy day.
#EyeofSauron, indeed.
Today's ACA Signups News, So Far
Watch this space. There will be more today. And look: Here it is!
11:15
BOOM, there it is: AP/ABC News Confirm breaking 7M QHPs by Midnight
Alabama (yes, Alabama): QHPs up 40% over February to 77K
Hawaii: QHPs up 1,256 (impressive for HI)
Mississippi hit 32K QHPs...2 weeks ago
West Virginia: Medicaid expansion up to 105K, 73% of eligible population now covered
Vermont: 46.8K QHPs...4.5x February rate??
Delaware: QHPs up 1,463 since March 1st
District of Columbia: 37K total enrollments (includes SHOP, I think)
9:46
Massachusetts: 1,800 QHPs in 4 days
Connecticut: 74K QHPs, 118K Medicaid, may hit 200K total by midnight
8:41
March 31
While we're waiting...check out "UnskewedObamacare.com"
Covered California starts "triage" program
This will negatively impact the 3/31 total, but will allow even more people to enroll during the extension period:
Facing a flood of interest, the Covered California exchange plans to prevent some consumers from finishing their Obamacare enrollment so others can start the sign-up process to meet Monday's deadline.
Healthcare.Gov updates their site traffic again: Over 1.6 million visitors as of 2pm
Again, they reported 2 million visits on Friday & Saturday combined, which resulted in over 160K enrollments on Sunday (assume perhaps 130K on Saturday?).
If the visitors / enrollments ratio is an accurate measurement, then HC.gov could hit 2.5 - 3 million visitors by midnight...which could mean as many as 200,000 enrollments today alone...only from HC.gov.
LA Times/Rand Corp. Survey story from earlier today
Finally, this is a thing of beauty
Republicans know @charles_gaba has perpetrated a fraud w/ his #Obamacare #s. So I helped them out. #UnskewObamacare http://t.co/...
— Mike Nellis (@MikeNellis) March 31, 2014
Retweeted by Markos Moulitsas
Thanks, Kos.
Unskew Obamacare
Snark City. An old school Mad Magazine treatment of brainwrap's graph, all marked up with Republican talking points.
Kentucky: Around 2,060 QHPs added in 3 days
Rhode Island finally chimes in: 26.1K QHPs, 48.6K Medicaid
Nevada: Total QHPs up 4,500 since 3/22
Programming Note: NPR's "All Things Considered" today at 5pm & 7pm
For anyone interested, I'm scheduled to be on today's "All Things Considered" on NPR. The show airs at 5:00pm and again at 7:00pm Eastern.
It was good, though brief. It's too bad NPR gave equal time to Sen. Barrasso's delusional rant about several of the often-debunked Republican lies.
California: Exchange QHPs up to 1.21M as of 2am this morning
The Bad News: 2nd outage at HC.gov. The Good News: Exchange QHPs may break 7M by midnight anyway.
Attention News Media: Please Don't Call the Home Number
I've been contacted by perhaps 15 different news media outlets in the past couple of weeks--NPR, Newsweek, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Rolling Stone, etc.
Every one of them has had the decency to either email/tweet me first, or at least to call my business line (which is freely available).
Naturally, the one outlet who called my home line and bothered my wife was FOX News.
New York: 812K Total, est. 3,700 QHPs per day (?)
HC.gov offline for 6 hrs early this morning
Yeesh. Like I'm not scrambling enough this morning…
Vindication: LA Times / Rand Corp.: 9M Off-Exchange Enrollments
What do Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt and the #ACASurge all have in common?
They all starred in something called "Seven".
Actually, that would be
Se7en, in 1995. It's a murder mystery based on the seven deadly sins. I have no idea what brainwrap means by #ACASurge having a part in it. Anybody?
March 30
Final (?) 3/31 Exchange QHP Projection: 6.78M
Washington State: 5,800 QHPs in 3 days, 2.3x existing March rate
A brief note about Medicaid and Estimates vs. Confirmed Data
New York: Another 12.9K QHPs in 2 days, 2.1x existing March rate
Washington State: Assorted data points showing the impact of the ACA so far