2015 Open Enrollment Projections Dip Slightly
The Department of Health and Human Services predicts between 9M and 9.9M people will sign up during open enrollment.
- The open enrollment period is upon us and it appears that more Americans than ever before will be signing up for healthcare coverage. Yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its analysis for the 2015 open enrollment period and all trends point towards an increase.
Currently, there are 7.1 million Americans enrolled in private health plans through the new state-based marketplaces and HHS predicts that nearly 83 percent of them will re-enroll for next year. The overall numbers show that more Americans will start getting on board and it is projected that between 9 million and 9.9 million will be enrolled through the Affordable Care Act. That would be a 28 percent increase in the marketplace.
The projection examined the three different paths that individuals can take to enroll in healthcare. These include: (1) re-enrollment by those that are already using the solution, (2) shifts by off-Marketplace individual enrollees into the Marketplace and (3) shift by uninsured into the Marketplace.
HHS then used a bottom-up approach to make projections. This includes incorporating data from the experience of the first open enrollment period, recent population surveys of insurance coverage, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services data on current enrollees and information from comparable programs aimed at covering the uninsured, industry data and insurance enrollment patterns.
While this projection is a strong increase, it is below the original projects the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made earlier this year that estimated 13 million people would have insurance and pay their premiums through the Marketplace. This projection relied heavily on ramp up assumptions.
“CBO’s most recent estimates were released in April 2014, although much of the analysis was completed before final data on 2014 open enrollment was available,” the report reads. “CBO’s projections show Marketplace enrollment reaching a steady state of 25 million enrollees by 2017. CBO assumes that enrollment will ramp up to that steady state in just over three years, which generates an estimate of 13 million enrollees in 2015, 24 million in 2016, and 25 million thereafter.”
The report goes on to say that recent experiences with new insurance coverage provide a range of data points. This helps programs that have been established for a particularly defined set of individuals, like Medicare Part D, support a rapid ramp-up period. The CBO projections from earlier in the year, examined a three year window and projects up to 25 million Americans enrolling. If the ramp-up is projected to four or five years, the estimate of 2015 Marketplace enrollment lowers to 11.5 million (four years) or 9 million (five years).
More Americans with health insurance increases the pressure on providers and payers to ensure they can handle increased demand. This makes improved operations and technology upgrades more appealing.
