Healthcare.gov appears to be working much better, at least in enabling individuals to select plans. And some of the state exchange web sites appear to be improving their functionality too. Some have heralded these advances as providing hope that the Exchanges will be able to meet the enrollment projections on which the economics of insurance without medical underwriting in part depend. But do these claims stand up to the cold light of mathematics? Not very well.
Here’s the headline:
A close look at the numbers shows that the pace of enrollments from here to the close of open enrollment needed to meet projections is high in every state, even those touted as successful, and almost impossibly high in many. Given the incredibly slow start in most jurisdictions, it will not just take a little pickup over the next few months to achieve the projected and needed number of persons in the Exchanges. It will take a miraculous last minute stampede. Since miracles seldom occur, the result may be two different stories of the Affordable Care Act: a few states in which the Exchanges proved from the start to be a somewhat stable mechanism for providing health insurance without medical underwriting but a significant number of other states in which the results for at least the first year represent a large failure.
Recent News
News appears to be breaking out that the federal exchanges enrolled about 100,000 in November. This is being heralded as somewhat of a success compared to the 26,000 who enrolled in October. And, of course, enrollment figures from healthcare.gov are difficult to assess due to the actual and feared dysfunctionality of the web site. But one way to look at this is to consider what has to happen between December 1, 2013, and March 23, 2014, the close of open enrollment to make projections. The states that are dependent on healthcare.gov need about 4.84 million enrollees by the end of that period if the nation is to meet the goal of having 7 million enrolled in the Exchanges by the close of open enrollment. If, right now, there are about 126,000 enrollees in those states, we are just 2.5% of the way there.
The pace of enrollment on healthcare.gov will need to increase by a factor of about 20 in order to meet goal. In absolute terms, healthcare.gov needs to be enrolling about 42,000 people per day. And while perhaps not every single one of those people need to enroll for the system to succeed, the 7 million enrollment goal isn’t just a mere wish. There are, as I and many others have noted potentially serious consequences to the stability of insurance markets if the figures fall well short, even in several states.
Whether healthcare.gov can score the needed come back, however, will basically depend on two related factors: (1) whether healthcare.gov is truly fixed and can stand up to the increased pace that will be needed and (2) whether the requisite increase in pace is likely. This latter factor depends in turn on where on the following spectrum the possibilities fall. On one end of the spectrum, there is the possibility that there is this pent up demand from procrastinators that will surge forward to access the web site in the coming weeks.
Perhaps March Madness for 2014 will constitute this huge surge — kind of like April 15 rushes to the post office to send in tax returns — as the March 23 “deadline” approaches. On the other end of the spectrum, there is the possibility that most people who wanted to and had the means to enroll — the wealthy sick — did so already and others have looked at the prices, the coverages and the penalties and decided that, for now, Exchange coverage is not for them. The fact that a surprising 70% of current enrollees in the Exchange plans are unsubsidized gives some support to this gloomier hypothesis.
To get further insights, we can also take a closer look at some representative states.
Connecticut
First, let’s look at what has to happen in the most successful state, Connecticut. There, as of November 14, 2013 (the date of the last report), 7,591 people had selected a plan. That’s not all it will take finally to get coverage — among other things, people will have to start actually paying premiums — but it’s a solid start. This 7,591 figure represents 12.9% of the projected total of 58,637 for Connecticut. A little math shows that in order to make projections, people in Connecticut will need to enroll at a pace 2.3 times faster than they had as of November 14 in order to make the projection by the March 23, 2014 date.
It hardly seems impossible that Connecticut could make the projections. Whether they do so, however, will basically depend on the location of Connecticut on the spectrum discussed above. We should have a better sense of where on the spectrum we are falling when Connecticut releases new numbers.
Texas
Connecticut is a small state. The enrollment there was projected to constitute only about 1.4% of the total enrollment in the Exchanges. Let’s take a look at a big state: my home state of Texas. With the largest uninsured population in the country and with no Medicaid expansion into which some Exchange eligible persons might otherwise “fudge into,” Texas was supposed to enroll 780,959. As of November 2, 2014, Texas had enrolled just 2,991. This means that Texas will have to enroll at a pace 59 times faster than it had as of that date in order to meet enrollment projections. And, even if due to failure to the healthcare.gov website, Texas has enrolled, say, just 10,000 as of November 30, 2013, it will still need to up its pace by a factor of 41 in order to meet projections. Viewed in absolute terms, Texas will need to enroll at a pace of over 6,800 per day. Again, we will have a better sense of the plausibility of this increase when the federal government releases newer data.
Another way of thinking about the issue is to consider what would happen if Texas’ future enrollment relative to its prior enrollment is the same as Connecticut needs to be in order to meet the Connecticut projection. If Texas enrolls at a pace 2.3 times faster than it has thus far, Texas enrollment will be something like 29,000. That would be just 4% of what was originally projected, a shortfall of 752,000. Connecticut could double its projected enrollment and it would barely make a dent in compensating for a shortfall of this magnitude. Even if Texas celebrates the rebirth of healthcare.gov by stepping up its enrollment by a factor of 10, that still gives it less than 150,000 enrollees, a shortfall of 630,000 over the projected value.
It would also help if the government could get the Spanish language version of its website, cuidadodesalud.gov, to accept applications the same way that healthcare.gov does.
California
A problem with projecting Texas numbers is that it has been hamstrung by its chosen dependency on healthcare.gov, which has been completely dysfunctional until recently. So, what about a large state that shares some demographic characteristics of Texas but that has a mostly functional web site? Let’s look at California.
In California, as of November 19, 2013, there were 78,891 counted as enrolled relative to a projected enrollment as of March 23, 2014 of 691,016. Viewed one way, California is going to need to step up the pace of its enrollment by a factor of 3.07 in order to meet its target. In absolute terms, California needs a pace of about 4,936 per day (including weekends and including the busy holiday season) in order to meet target.
Whether viewed in relative or absolute terms, the pace needed in California is ambitious. Covered California, which brags of a recent tripling in the pace of enrollment, still enrolled just 2,700 per day for Exchange plans in the most recent period for which data currently exists. (It is only by counting Medicaid/Medical enrollments that the numbers get higher). If California were to persist at that pace for the remainder of the enrollment period, it would have something like 414,000 enrolled by the March 23, 2014 date.
Depending on the precise composition of the pool of insureds, such a figure would likely be enough to stave off severe adverse selection but probably not enough to do so entirely. And, again, for those focusing on the 7 million nationwide figure, shortfalls of 277,000 in California or 700,000 in Texas are just difficult to compensate for even if other states are considerably more successful.
New York
Let’s pick one more big state. And, again, let’s pick one where the Exchange is generally said to be doing well: New York. In New York, as of November 24, 2013, 41,021 are claimed to have enrolled in plans out of the 411,304 originally projected. This means New York will have to quadruple the pace of enrollments (4.09) in order to meet projections.
In absolute terms, the state needs to be enrolling 3,111 per day every day until March 23, 2014. It is thus in roughly the same position as California. Whether it meets its goals depends on why there has thus far been a shortfall. If it’s massive procrastination, perhaps New York can get pretty close. If, on the other hand, many New Yorkers are rejecting the product, and the pace of enrollment just doubles from what it has been, expect New York to fall short by about 190,000 people (46%). Again, smaller states that are more successful will have difficulty compensating for such a large absolute shortfall.
Conclusion
There is no state in which a significant uptick in the pace of enrollments will not be needed in order to meet enrollment projections. This is true in states that have their own Exchanges and states that do not. It is true in states touted as a success as well, of course, of those seen as failing. It is most definitely true for states that depend on the federal website, healthcare.gov.
In a few states, the burden may be met. Many people do indeed procrastinate, even perhaps when it comes to subsidized health insurance that they now lack. To meet enrollment projections in many other states,however, we need for Exchange applications to be far more the province of procrastinators than even income tax returns. After all, only 25% or so wait until the last two weeks to file those. In these other states, the appropriate analogy may not be tax procrastination but the miracle of The Heidi Game in which two touchdowns were scored in the closing 9 seconds after the mainstream media (NBC Sports) assumed the game was lost. But it’s been 45 years since that turnaround occurred. It just might happen again with applications for health insurance on the Exchanges, but it seems unlikely.
Could I add one more point?
People are focusing on March 23, 2014 (earlier March 15, 2014) as the measuring date. The ACA will presumably be deemed a success if enrollment figures meet projections by that date. But this strikes me as an awfully generous measure. The problem for insurers is that there will be a smaller pool during the first three months of the policy year. And smaller pools generally have higher claims per person. So, if I ran the world, I’d be looking at two dates to examine enrollments: January 1, 2014 when the plans kick in and March 23, 2014 when open enrollment ends.
Yes, great enrollment by March 23 will ultimately go a long way to reassuring insurers if enrollment is problematic on New Years Day. But if enrollment is really bad come Rose Bowl time, expect insurers to lose a lot of money on claims filed between then and the close of open enrollment. If they can’t make that money back on the late filers, expect insurers to figure out some way of getting even for 2015.
Seth J. Chandler is a Professor of Law at the University of Houston at the University of Houston and author of acadeathspiral.org, where this post originally appeared.
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