I haven't been able to post here too much lately, partially due to some day-job business crises, partly due to just life stuff, and partly because I've just been swamped with ACA-related material leading up to the election and, of course, #OE2 (that's the 2nd Open Enrollment period; I'm pushing hard to get #OE2 trending as the "official" hashtag, hint, hint...)
Most of these posts are pretty long, so please forgive me if I mainly just present summaries and links the full pieces over at ACA Signups:
First, what I thought was going to be my Big Story of the week:
EXCLUSIVE: Current Exchange QHP enrollments may have dipped below 7.0 million...and that's just fine for now
Last week, after having hunted down the current QHP enrollments for about a dozen states, I tallied them up and concluded that the average "attrition rate" for private ACA exchange policy enrollments was around 2% per month since April, after lopping off about 12% for those who never paid their first premium.
I still stand by this, but an extensive discussion with Jed Graham of Investors Business Daily made me realize that presenting it this way can lead to confusion, because I'm essentially mixing together two different estimated numbers (% paid & attrition rate), each of which may vary widely from state to state, instead of simply comparing the number of people currently enrolled against the 8.02 million who had enrolled (whether paid up yet or not) as of April 19th.
Next, a follow-up to the above:
What's the Matter with Florida?
Yesterday, in my Big Exclusive Post® about the number of people currently enrolled in exchange QHPs appearing to have dropped down to a bit below 7 million, I noted that based on the 15 states for which I have current enrollment data from September or October (plus 1, Oklahoma, from August), it looks like the national total is right around 7 million on the nose at the moment. However, if you throw Florida into the mix, it drops noticeably, making it look more like 6.8 million.
I also noted that there are two problems with the Florida data: First, that it's had significantly more dropoff (22.5%) from the official April figure than any of the other states listed (with the exception of Nevada, which has had it's own technical headaches to the point that they're dropping their exchange entirely).
Even more problematic is that this 22.5% "drop" was supposedly only as of June 30th (it comes from Florida's 2015 policy rate request filing report from the insurance companies operating on the federal exchange).
This makes Florida an incredible outlier; take another look at the chart:
The TRULY big ACA story of the day, however, is the unexpected announcement that the SCOTUS has decided to take up the King v. Burwell case (basically, Halbig's kid brother):
My "Denny's Grand Slam" #Halbig/#King solution is looking like less of a joke today...
Of course, I'm not a lawyer, nor have I read the entire law. I have no idea how naive I'm being here, and I'm sure it's a wee bit more complicated than just registering a domain name and repointing it to HC.gov.
However, many Very Important Legal People who know this stuff far better than I seem to think that I might not be so crazy after all:
What impact will today's SCOTUS announcement have on #OE2 enrollments?
Today, I'd like to look at a more immediate question: What impact will today's news have on enrollment during #OE2 (the 2nd open enrollment period) which starts next week?
There are three possibilities:
Negative: People who were otherwise inclined to go ahead and sign up via Healthcare.Gov hear something in the news about "Obamacare in danger from another lawsuit" and get scared off, not wanting to be "involved" with something that "may be Unconstitutional" etc, etc.
Result: Depressed enrollments for #OE2.
Positive: People who were otherwise not inclined to "get in on this Obamacare thing" are jolted into action to jump all over it while they have the chance, figuring that even if it does get shut down, they'll at least get 6 months to a year of decent, affordable healthcare coverage before SCOTUS pulls the plug.
Result: Spiked enrollments for #OE2
Neutral: People who aren't paying attention (ie, about 95% of the public on either side of the issue) hear "bla, bla, bla, Republicans attacking Obamacare again, bla, bla, bla, White House defending Obamacare again, bla, bla, bla" and pretty much tune out the whole thing.
Result: No significant impact on #OE2 enrollments one way or the other.
And, finally, a jaw-droppingly fun new possible workaround (not from me, but that's ok):
Another potential #Halbig/#King workaround: "The State Exchange Two-Step"
Fortunately, one of my regular readers, "secretadvocate", has brought up another fascinating possible workaround which I'm calling "The State Exchange Two-Step".
Rather than try to explain it myself, he's given me permission to repost the idea verbatim: