Nearly 2 Million Sign Up for Coverage — Lag in Enrollment Due to Multiple Factors
CMS released its third enrollment snapshot today for the 2018 enrollment period. Overall, cumulative enrollment continues to be lower than last year with an 11.6% decline in enrollment from last year. With 17 days of enrollment data telling about the same story, it’s unlikely that this is a blip but it also doesn’t tell us how the final, and most important, weeks of Open Enrollment will play out. Historically, we have seen an increase in the pace of enrollment during the final two weeks — so we could see an improvement in the weeks to come.
Comparing the Week 3 snapshot to Week 2 of this year, we can see that the pace of people renewing coverage picked up but that the pace of new enrollment slowed even more. We should watch the new enrollment numbers closely in the weeks to come. Keep in mind, enrollment volume increases substantially in the two weeks before the deadline, so a change to this trend in the final two weeks could overshadow the performance we’re seeing now. And because of this year’s early Thanksgiving, an extra week comes during that crucial final period rather than before. We expect next week’s Week 4 snapshot will, as in past years, reflect a normal Thanksgiving slump in enrollment. But To head off any alarms for next week, Thanksgiving performance this year should be compared to Thanksgiving performance last year — not to Week 3 of this year.
The year-over-year decline we’re seeing is almost certainly the result of a combination of a lot factors; including, media coverage of Open Enrollment has been far more limited, the administration has entered its second year with a 90% cut to outreach, this year’s in-person assistance was cut again effectively reducing the 2016 budget by 80%, once again we’re seeing a drastically shorter open enrollment period, the individual mandate was zeroed out for 2019, CMS officials are again not engaging the public or the media, and short term limited duration plans are now being offered in some places.
Week 3: Cumulative Totals and Daily Averages
