Maryland's wobbly ACA insurance outlet, the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, has finally released county-level statistics on expanded Medicaid -- actually, all Medicaid signups since enrollment began.
The monthly report says:
Enrollment Data
As of July 26, 2014, 332,504 individuals have gained Medicaid coverage in 2014 and remain active in Medicaid. This includes the 95,889 PAC enrollees who were automatically converted on January 1, 2014 to full Medicaid coverage.
Besides being chaotic and broken, the MHBE has been notoriously inconsistent with statistics. In this case, the county stats don't break out where the 96,000 individuals on Maryland's previous Medicaid program were as of Jan. 1, so it's hard to tell how successful outreach was to new recipients and whether, for example, rural counties are underrepresented in the total of new signups.
Beginning this month, we will also report net changes in Medicaid enrollment. This figure takes into account the fact individuals lose Medicaid coverage because of changes in household, age, and income, as well as redeterminations. Compared to December 31, 2013, the net change in Medicaid enrollment as of July 26, 2014 is +273,245.
It's a little hard to interpret this last, since the difference is 69,000 and not the 96,000 Medicaid folks rolled over as of 1/1/14. More statistical soup.
As of July 26, 78,930 individuals have enrolled in a qualified health plan.
That would be the total of private signups. The total insured may be a different number, since some people may drop off the state exchange plans for various reasons week by week, while others may sign up due to "qualifying events."
In the meantime, the MHBE board has approved over $100 million in new contracts to rebuild the website and underlying software or keep the old one creaking along until Nov. 15.
As far as can be determined, all but one of them are no-bid, sole-source deals approved in secret meetings outside public view.
Below the squid squig, a summary table. The final column I've added as I'm interested in tracking my own region's numbers. The Eastern Shore is made up of eight or nine counties, depending on whether you include Cecil County.
Apologies in advance for any typos, because the table was created using OCR on a fuzzy graphic embedded in the MHBE press release. Nor can I explain the big white space before the table.
County |
Dec 2013 |
April 2014 |
Change |
Eastern Shore |
Allegany |
16,792 |
20,276 |
3,484 |
|
Anne Arundel |
62,720 |
80,396 |
17,676 |
|
Baltimore City |
213,693 |
267,351 |
53,658 |
|
Baltimore County |
133,489 |
166,689 |
33,200 |
|
Calvert |
110,793 |
13,766 |
2,973 |
|
Caroline |
8,869 |
10,577 |
1,708 |
1708 |
Carroll |
15,999 |
20,399 |
4,400 |
|
Cecil |
19,165 |
24,127 |
4,962 |
|
Charles |
21,207 |
26,999 |
5,792 |
|
Dorchester |
9,696 |
11,875 |
2,179 |
2179 |
Frederick |
27,694 |
35,238 |
7,544 |
|
Garrett |
6,652 |
8,048 |
1,396 |
|
Harfmd |
30,003 |
37,855 |
7,852 |
|
Howard |
27,753 |
37,012 |
9,259 |
|
Kent |
3,729 |
4,707 |
978 |
978 |
Montgomery |
129,099 |
164,001 |
34,902 |
|
Prince George's |
164,204 |
204,484 |
40,280 |
|
Queen Anne's |
6,877 |
8,617 |
1,740 |
1740 |
Somerset |
6,605 |
7,991 |
1,386 |
1386 |
St Mary's |
16,263 |
20,374 |
4,111 |
|
Talbot |
6,063 |
7,698 |
1,635 |
1635 |
Washington |
30,826 |
37,827 |
7,001 |
|
Wicomico |
24,769 |
30,586 |
5,817 |
5817 |
Worcester |
9,063 |
12,058 |
2,995 |
2995 |
|
|
|
256,928 |
18,438 |
Scribd Embed from document view page:
MHBE Monthly Report Aug 1 2014 by Craig O'Donnell