Open enrollment going well, so far
Wellington, Colo.-based insurance broker Louise Norris remembers last year’s disastrous launch of Obamacare open enrollment all too well. “I don’t think we did a single enrollment the whole month of October,” she said.
But since the 2015 open enrollment started Nov. 15, the brokerage she runs with her husband has been busy signing up people for health coverage from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day.
Most insurers, hospitals and other enrollment organizations agree that the federal and state exchanges are performing much better this time around. But the process of signing up and re-enrolling millions of Americans still isn’t perfect, with some problems reported around the country.
HHS has not released figures on how many people have actually enrolled through HealthCare.gov, but it did say about 100,000 people filed applications the opening weekend. Earlier this month, HHS estimated that 9 million to 9.9 million people would enroll in health plans through the state and federal exchanges for 2015. That is up from the 6.7 million Americans who signed up and paid for coverage in 2014.
Several state-run exchanges have released their initial enrollment numbers.
Massachusetts, where the state-run exchange experienced severe problems during the first open enrollment, said about 20,000 people were deemed eligible for a plan in the first five days. Minnesota, another state with severe exchange dysfunction last time, said its MN-Sure exchange enrolled more than 1,500 people in plans in the first four days. In California, more than 11,000 people signed up for exchange plans in the first four days, according to a Covered California spokesman. The state hopes to enroll 500,000 new members this year, which would give Covered California about 1.7 million enrollees.
The overall performance of the exchanges so far has been a huge relief for healthcare organizations. “I think all of the work CMS did in terms of testing really paid off,” said Lisa Rubino, a senior vice president at Molina Healthcare, which is offering exchange plans in nine states.
Some new not-for-profit co-op plans, which suffered badly from exchange glitches during the first open enrollment, were especially upbeat. Dr. Ralph Prows, CEO of Oregon’s Health CO-OP, said his plan tallied about 500 enrollments during the opening weekend and has not experienced any problems with the back-end process for receiving enrollment data from the exchange. Oregon switched to using the HealthCare.gov platform this year after a terrible experience with its own technology last time.
Washington state’s Healthplanfinder exchange experienced intermittent outages as well as planned maintenance downtime during off hours. These issues arose from the exchange’s system for receiving premiums directly from consumers rather than having payments go directly to health plans. Such errors have affected 7,500 Washington customers, most of whom received incorrect invoices. State officials said they hope to rectify those problems by year-end.
In Colorado, which runs its own exchange, insurance broker Norris said it’s still somewhat challenging for consumers to qualify for federal premium subsidies and cost-sharing. The state exchange has tried to more smoothly integrate the process for determining whether people qualify for Medicaid or a premium tax credit to buy an exchange plan. But she said it’s still “not as smooth as it should be.”
Jim Whisler, an actuarial consultant with Deloitte, said he expects there will be cases where previously enrolled consumers who switch plans are double-billed. Many enrollees are shopping for new plans to find a better deal.