ACA Marketplace Enrollment Numbers Up From Last Year

Implementing Health Reform. On December 18, 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that 5.97 million consumers have actively selected a plan through healthcare.gov for coverage effective January 1, 2016. This compares to 3.4 million active selections as of this time last year.

This does not count enrollees through state exchanges, who accounted for over a quarter of enrollees last year. It also does not include consumers who will be automatically reenrolled for January 1, 2016 in their current plan or one similar to it. Auto-reenrollments are likely to add perhaps another 3 million enrollees to the December 18 figure for January 1 coverage.

The total also does not include some of the million individuals who were unable to get through during December 14 and 15 and who are still being contacted by CMS to ensure that they are enrolled for January 1. Finally, it does not include individuals who will enroll between now and the January 31, 2016 end of open enrollment. Final marketplace effectuated enrollment figures for 2016 are likely to be far higher.

The total plan selections include 2.4 million new consumers. In the last five days, 48 percent of plan selections were from new enrollees; in the last two days, 60 percent were new. Earlier in the open enrollment period only about a third of enrollees were new. Although some of these individuals may have been switching from individual coverage outside the exchange, most were probably uninsured at the time of enrollment.

Of the plan selections, 3.6 million were from individuals who were actively reenrolling in coverage. CMS has estimated that over half of 2015 enrollees have actively reenrolled, compared to only about a third last year. CMS estimates that the average re-enrollee will pay less in 2016 for premiums than in 2015. Earlier HHS had projected that active re-enrollees would save an average of $50 a month by returning to shop. Although this means that active re-enrollees will not experience the premium increases that have been widely reported for 2016, it is quite possible that the plans they select will have higher cost-sharing or narrower networks than their 2015 plans, and there is always the question of whether premiums set by the lowest-premium plans will be adequate to ensure their solvency.

During the last few days, healthcare.gov and its call center saw unprecedented activity. The call center received 2 million calls while healthcare.gov received 3.7 million visitors. In the last two days, 1.1 million consumers selected plans, including 600,000 in the last 24 hours. On December 15, there were over 180,000 consumers shopping at any one time for much of the day, while 11 consumers were selecting plans every second. About a million consumers left contact information with the call center or website when wait times became too long, and CMS is in the process of contacting these consumers to ensure their enrollment for January 1, 2016.

All of this bodes well for the marketplaces for 2016. More enrollees likely means a healthier risk pool and a larger market for insurers. This could in turn bring down premium increases for 2017.

from Health Affairs Blog http://ift.tt/1OdqNVl