9.9 Million Still Enrolled and Paid Says September 2015 Report

According to CMS 9.9 million are enrolled and paid for Marketplace coverage. This is on track the 9.1 million HHS estimate for the end of 2015 and the CBO’s previous estimate of an average of 11 million for the year.

NOTE: CBO projections average the whole year, it doesn’t take a snapshot of a given moment. 11.7 enrolled as of end of open enrollment, plus special enrollment, plus those who drop plan over time is used to figure this out.

NOTE: The report looks at numbers up to June 30, 2015 even though the CMS report was from September 8, 2015. Thus we should expect the total enrolled and paid to be closer to the 9.1 million estimate by the time the year is out.

TIP: Don’t confuse this with those who enrolled in Medicaid, those who staid on their parents plan, those who got employer coverage under the employer mandate.

Here is a good blip of information from March 2015 to compare things to and to help you better understand what is really happening.

• 11.7 million are estimated to have enrolled in the Marketplaces during 2015 open enrollment (Nov 2014 to Feb 2015). This includes 4.5 million who re-enrolled from 2014.
• As of March 2015 HHS reported a total of 16.4 covered due to the ACA between the Marketplace, Medicaid expansion, young adults staying on their parents plan, and other coverage provisions. According to Gallup that translates to an uninsured rate of 11.9% down from a high of 18% in 2013. By the second quarter of 2015 the uninsured rate fell to 11.4%.
• A May 2015 RAND corporation study estimated that  22.8 million got coverage and 5.9 million lost plans for a net total of 16.9 million newly insured. 9.6 million people enrolled in employer-sponsored health plans, followed by Medicaid (6.5 million), the individual marketplaces (4.1 million), non-marketplace individual plans (1.2 million) and other insurance sources (1.5 million). To clarify that is 4.1 million newly enrolled in the Marketplace and 7.1 who transitioned to Marketplace coverage for a total of 11.2 million.

So if we look at HHS / CMS estimates we see that of the 11.7 million 9.9 are still paying and enrolled (that is actually way more impressive than last year where we saw 8 million drop to 4.5 million). If we look at the RAND corporation study we see that the majority of the newly covered under the ACA are still covered (so we aren’t confusing Marketplace coverage will total coverage under the ACA which is much higher).

Finally we need to look at the total uninsured rate.

Latest uninsured Rate: As of second quarter of 2015 the uninsured rate is 11.4% (average from second quarter 2015) for Americans 18 – 64 and 9.2% for all Americans of all ages.

TIP: The new drops in coverage may have affected the uninsured rate slightly, but we don’t know how many transitioned to Medicaid or employer plans.

So as a conclusion everything is on track and as predicted. The uninsured rate is dropping and more and more people are getting covered. We can assume that over every year we will see a dip in sign-ups, but for sure this is on-point and better than last year by far.