<p>:)
The 500,000 bet did not need a ringer. </p>
<p>This bet…I think a lot of us think the date will be extended. </p>
<p>I am not going to change the numbers I came up with today for California even though the percentage of payees I used is going to be too low. Because I should have waited one week for covered california to release numbers and because those Washington state numbers scare the … out of me. :). </p>
<p>We could bet on how many exchanges are going to crash on Mar 31. </p>
<p>Could be an ugly day.</p>
<p>Sounds more like a logical excuse to me - crash a couple of exchanges and extend the date. :p</p>
<p>Texaspg, :).</p>
<p>Ok… I feel better about the state of Washington.</p>
<p>“So far nearly 91,000 people have purchased individual insurance coverage through the state’s exchange. An additional 184,000 residents now have insurance purchased outside of the exchange, according to Kreidler.”</p>
<p>I dont know how you predict 300,000 insured when there already are 275,000 insured with March coming and 1 1/2 months to go…</p>
<p>I am trying to understand some of the deadlines.</p>
<p>If someone had insurance before, didn’t they have a renewal deadline that expired last month? </p>
<p>If that is true - all additions since last month have to be newly insured?</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.healthcare.gov/how-can-i-get-coverage-outside-of-open-enrollment/#question=my-current-insurance-plan-expires-in-2014-outside-of-the-open-enrollment-period-can-i-sign-up-for-coverage-at-that-time”>https://www.healthcare.gov/how-can-i-get-coverage-outside-of-open-enrollment/#question=my-current-insurance-plan-expires-in-2014-outside-of-the-open-enrollment-period-can-i-sign-up-for-coverage-at-that-time</a></p>
<p>Some people have insurance that doesnt expire Dec 31. Some people have insurance that expires after the open enrollment period.</p>
<p>"My current insurance plan expires in 2014, outside of the open enrollment period. Can I sign up for coverage at that time?
Yes. If you bought or renewed a plan in 2013 that ends in 2014, you’ll get a special enrollment period when that policy ends to buy new coverage for you and your family.</p>
<p>The special enrollment period begins 30 days before your plan ends in 2014. You have up to 60 days to enroll in coverage, either inside or outside of the Marketplace.</p>
<p>To avoid a gap in coverage, enroll in a new plan by the 15th of the last month of your current plan’s coverage.</p>
<p>If you miss this special enrollment period, you may have to wait until the next open enrollment period in November 2014 to buy coverage."</p>
<p>Dstark, I don’t know the details, but Washington had some good programs pre-ACA that helped lower income people get insurance. There was a program to provide very low premium-based coverage for people who didn’t quite qualify for Medicaid, and there was a transitional program for subsidized premiums which apparently was specifically intended to cover the gap between passage of ACA and implementation – see: <a href=“Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos”>Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos;
<p>and <a href=“http://www.wsma.org/Media/PRC-pdfs-Operations/HI_WA_HEALTH_Overview.pdf”>Sign-In Form;
<p>So what you are seeing with the Washington numbers is the impact of the state getting a head start on enrollments by creating interim plans to give them coverage (at least at some level – when you go to the first link you’ll see that the Washington Health Program policies had benefit caps of $75-$100K, so not equivalent to the ACA policies). </p>
<p>The greater the success of the Washington Health Program and its subsidized Basic Health program, the more people would have had some level of insurance already, but these programs were created and funded with the knowledge that ACA was on the horizon – so they probably wouldn’t have existed without ACA. </p>
<p>But that’s why it does not make sense to look for “newly” insured in Washington – you really have to tease out numbers before that. </p>
<p>Calmom, I agree that programs that were implemented because of ACA should be used to support what ACA has done. Thanks for the info.</p>
<p>I dont know how many uninsured there were in the state of Washinton in 2013. In 2012, there were 959,000 that wew uninsured. 449,000 were medicaid eligible so we are really talking somewhere around 510,000 uninsured that are eligible for private individual health insurance.</p>
<p>The story that I linked said that 23,000 formerly uninsured would buy health insurance.
23,000 out of 510,000 I dont think is a good number. I am obviously in favor of ACA and the programs that have been implemented because of ACA, but we need to make a bigger dent than 4.5 percent of the uninsured that are ekigible for private individual health insurance.</p>
<p>That was my concern.</p>
<p>Like many stories these days, after rereading the story, I think the estimate of 23,000 is ridiculously low. I have no idea when that estimate was made. </p>
<p>Anyway, I think things look good. :)</p>
<p><a href=“Health Insurance Coverage of the Total Population | KFF”>http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-population/</a></p>
<p><a href=“ACA Medicaid/CHIP Spreadsheet | ACA Signups”>http://acasignups.net/spreadsheet-med</a></p>
<p>delete</p>
<p>dstark, I believe the part about if your plan expires in 2014, you’ll get a special enrollment period…does not apply to the individual market in California. All non-grandfathered plans were cancelled Dec 31, 2013. There were some Blue Shield plans that were extended to March 31 but there is no special enrollment period for these plans. </p>
<p>GP, ok. thanks.</p>
<p>If someone has insurance that expires at some time outside the open enrollment period, the loss of that insurance constitutes a special circumstance that allows the person to enroll in the exchange at a different time of year.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t apply to California Blue Shield policies that were extended to March 31, simply because that date coincides with the end of open enrollment. </p>
<p>But there are many other circumstance that can come up, so there will be small numbers of enrollments throughout the year. </p>
<p>
My point is that the people who signed up for the transitional plan should be counted as new ACA subscribers. They are people who would have been uninsured, primarily because they could not afford insurance, but for the fact that Washington created a bridge program to get them some sort of coverage until such time as the exchange was available. </p>
<p>'This bet…I think a lot of us think the date will be extended."</p>
<p>I’ll take the bet. I don’t think it will be extended. </p>
<p>Emilybee, I like your optimism.</p>
<p>Twenty-eight delays and counting. What’s one more? It’s a toss up.</p>
<p>Let’s be specific. We’re talking about whether the federal exchange deadline for enrolling (not paying) will be extended? I think it will either not be extended at all, or will be extended for some uninterestingly small amount of time less or equal to two days.</p>
<p>I am optimistic too. I think there are going to be so many sign ups during the last week of March that we are going to see extensions beyond March.</p>
<p>The date is going to be extended because the goal is too insure people and we dont want to leave people uninsured. We may differ on how to insure people but we all share the goal of insuring people. </p>
<p>We want our kids, our families, our friends and neighbors and everybody else insured.</p>
<p>People procrastinate. We all know that. I am not 100 percent sure but I think the last week of March is going to be the biggest sign up week for those using an exchange and many exchanges are going to be overwhelmed with too many sign ups. </p>
<p>So… I guess I will bet the last date of March will not be the final sign up date. There will be an extension. People will be enrolling after Mar 31. </p>
<p>I think they won’t extend because they need to have the stories come out of people who thought they could wait to get insurance until they were sick and find out they are SOL. Too many people still believe that to be the case and no amount of explaining to them gets it to sink in. They need people to see it for themselves. The sooner this happens, the better enrollment will be come next November. </p>
<p>You may be right emilybee. </p>
<p>I am not as sure about this bet as I was about the one with GP. :)</p>