Week 4: With Less than Three Weeks to Go Until Dec 15 Deadline, There’s A Lot of Work to Do to Match Enrollment From Last Year
In the fourth enrollment snapshot released by CMS today, enrollment at HealthCare.gov is growing steadily but it’s still lagging enrollment totals from last year.
Every year, there is a slump in enrollment during the Thanksgiving holiday. This year is no exception. Comparing overall enrollment this year to the fourth week of enrollment last year, which was also Thanksgiving week, shows that cumulative sign-ups are down about 10 percent — 2,424,913 compared to 2,781,260 last year — taking into account there was an extra day of sign-ups at this point last year. New sign-ups are down almost 15 percent and people returning to sign up for coverage is down about 7 percent. The outstanding question is whether enrollment picks up at a faster pace during the final three weeks before the December 15 deadline.
The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that a significant problem is the lack of awareness about the December 15 deadline for buying coverage at HealthCare.gov. Almost 4 out of 5 people who are uninsured or buy their own insurance either don’t know the deadline is around the corner or thought it was a different day or refused to answer. In fact, fewer people know about the deadline this year — last year 53 percent didn’t know about the deadline compared to 61 percent this year.
The week after Thanksgiving is when we should see a significant increase in the pace of enrollment. This is the final stretch to the deadline and the impact of the final deadline will start to take over and change enrollment behavior. We should see that in the next snapshot.
State-by-State Comparison
Once again, CMS released data for each state that uses the HealthCare.gov platform. Every state, continues to show an enrollment decline over last year. The ten states showing the greatest enrollment decline since last year are: Virginia (expanded Medicaid), Maine, West Virginia, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Missouri, New Hampshire, Illinois, Arizona and Wyoming.
