Week 5: Enrollment continues to outpace previous years despite outreach cuts taking their toll
CMS announced that overall 3.6 million people have signed up for health coverage through the fifth week of Open Enrollment which ended on December 2. That’s about 650,000 more sign-ups than at a similar point last year. However, if you look at the change week over week and compare it to previous years, you’ll notice that the pace of enrollment is slowing down. The slowdown is due to the Trump Administration’s decision to cut advertising, navigators, outreach funding and their refusal to use the resources of the federal government to get the facts out about Open Enrollment. As a reminder, here is Get America Covered co-found Josh Peck’s analysis from October that lays out how advertising cuts could impact enrollment.
Keep in mind that the cumulative data CMS released today is for 32 out of 45 days of enrollment this year compared to 35 days for the third Open Enrollment period and 33 days for the fourth Open Enrollment period out of a total 90 days. See the tables below for a daily, week-by-week, and graph comparisons for sign-ups, new enrollment and returning consumers.
Here’s our take from Get America Covered:
Overall, demand for health coverage continues to outpace demand from previous years showing just how much people value having health insurance. What’s more, nearly a million new consumers have signed up for coverage. Comparing enrollment during the first 5 weeks this year to the equivalent period last year, shows that cumulative sign-ups continue to outpace previous years and overall is up by about 650,0000 or 22 percent and total daily sign-ups are up 26 percent.
What’s important to note though is the change week over week which indicates that the pace of enrollments is slowing compared to previous years. Week 5 enrollment was on par with Week 5 during the fourth Open Enrollment period — just 13,000 more enrollments.
Historically, the week following Thanksgiving is when demand for coverage begins ramping up as we get closer to the deadline. It is also when outreach and advertising increase significantly to make sure young and healthy people know about the deadline or about the financial help that is available. We are starting to see the acute effects of these cuts. Low information consumers are not being reminded by government officials, television ads, and community navigators that they likely qualify for financial help. Therefore, while cumulative enrollment totals remain ahead of past years, the pace of enrollment has slowed dramatically.
Based on the high demand we have seen for health coverage this year, there is little doubt that more people would have signed up this year than last year, if the administration had not cut the enrollment period in half and had not cut outreach and advertising by 90 percent.
Week 5: Cumulative Totals and Daily Averages
Open Enrollment 5: Weekly Comparison
State-by-State Comparison
Every state, besides West Virginia, continues to show enrollment growth over last year. Total sign-ups are up between 45 percent and 29 percent compared to last year in the top 10 states: Mississippi, Wyoming, Texas, North Dakota, Maine, Iowa, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Nevada, Nebraska.
OE4 vs OE5 Comparison
In each of the following graphs the blue line tracks cumulative enrollment by week during the 5th Open Enrollment Period (OE5) and the orange line during the 4th Open Enrollment (OE4). We have a graph for Total, New and Returning enrollment. For each data point, we’ve included the change over the equivalent week during the previous year.
Graph 1: Cumulative Returning Enrollment by Week OE4 vs OE5
Just like last year, returning consumers have until December 15 to return and renew their coverage or sign up for a new plan; which means we can do a more apples to apples comparison. The gap between this year’s returning performance and last year’s is closing.
Graph 2: Cumulative New Enrollment by Week OE4 vs OE5
The schedule for new enrollment is very different this year since it is just 45 days instead of 90 days. Each week, there needs to be more new enrollments than the previous week to stay on pace with last year. The pace of new enrollments compared to previous year’s is slowing down — overall, it’s 28 percent higher for Week 5 compared to 38 percent higher for Week 4.
Graph 3: Cumulative Total Enrollment by Week OE4 vs OE5
All three graphs show, cumulative enrollment is higher this year than last year (Note: the first week this year was a day shorter so the increase over last year is actually larger than depicted).
