More Obamacare Enrollment Data, More Obamacare Enrollment Questions

More than nine months after the
start of Obamacare’s primary coverage expansion, it’s still
difficult to discern exactly what its effect was. And new data
released today does little to clear up remaining questions.

Multiple surveys so far indicate that millions of people who did
not previously have coverage are now insured. But how many were
covered directly through the law? And what was the net
increase?

A new report
from The National Health Interview Survey, an in-home survey taken
by federal researchers the National Center for Health Statistics
within the Centers for Disease Control, represents the first time
the government has attempted to measure the net impact of the law
on coverage. The researchers found that the percentage of people
who said they lacked insurance at the time of the interview dropped
from 14.4 percent in the first quarter of last year to the 13.1
percent this year. That drop indicates that about 3.8 million more
people had insurance in the first quarter of this year than in the
first quarter of last year, which, as The New York Times

notes, is in line with the private tracking polls from
Gallup.

But this survey probably doesn’t measure the full impact of the
law. That’s because the survey was conducted from January through
March of this year, when Obamacare’s open enrollment period was
still ongoing. So it wouldn’t capture much of the last-minute
enrollment surge that accounted for a significant portion of the
sign-ups under the law. People who signed-up at the end of March,
or in the extended enrollment period in early April, wouldn’t have
technically been insured for another month or more.

That leaves us with a likely net increase in coverage of several
million. But exactly how many is still difficult to say.

Meanwhile, the direct effects of the law, as reported by the
administration, continue to be unclear. Through the summer, federal
health officials have been working to resolve application
discrepancies related to income and citizenship with millions of
individuals receiving coverage and subsidies under the law. At the
end of May, about 1.2 million households, or 1.6 million
individuals, had income-related discrepancies. According to a memo
sent from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
yesterday, about 467,000 of those have been “closed” and about
430,000 are “currently in the process of being resolved.”

That leaves 279,000 households, or about 363,000 people, who
could lose their subsidies if they don’t send in additional
paperwork to verify their incomes before September 30.  

If that happens, their coverage won’t immediately be cancelled.
But it’s likely that with the subsidy gone, many would drop the
coverage they had.

It’s possible that many have already lost their subsidies. The
CMS memo notes how many cases have been closed, and how many are
being resolved. But it doesn’t provide any information at all about
how those cases were resolved. That’s a departure from
when the discrepancies were first revealed in June. At the time, as
CBS News reported, federal health officials
stressed that consumers were coming out ahead in the “vast
majority” of resolved cases. It seems probable some portion of the
resolutions since, and perhaps even a significant fraction, were
resolved with the subsidies being taken away.