Nearly 25,000 Washington residents completed applications for health plans in the first three days of open enrollment through Washington Healthplanfinder.
The state-based insurance exchange launched its second open enrollment period Saturday, but exchange officials pulled the site offline within a few hours after learning of a glitch involving tax credit calculations. The site was back up Sunday morning.
Through Monday, more than 10,000 people across the state completed applications for individual health plans — 2,000 of them scheduled their first payments — and more than 14,000 people signed up or renewed their coverage for the Medicaid program, called Washington Apple Health, according to exchange data released Tuesday evening.
The exchange website, www.wahealthplanfinder.org, had more than 40,000 visits during the first few days of open enrollment and the call center, 855-923-4633, received more than 11,000 calls.
More data about the second open enrollment period, including Clark County-specific figures, won’t be available until early December.
“Our initial data shows that we’re off to a strong start,” Richard Onizuka, the exchange’s chief executive officer, said in a news release. “The numbers demonstrate that people are aware of the opportunity and taking action to sign up or renew their existing plan.”
Open enrollment runs through Feb. 15. During that time, people with individual health plans and those who are uninsured can enroll in health coverage. After open enrollment, only people with qualifying life events will be eligible to enroll in a health plan through the exchange. Medicaid enrollment is year-round.
First-year data
Washington Healthplanfinder also released an enrollment report detailing health coverage in October (prior to open enrollment beginning) and during the first year of the exchange.
In October, 604,247 Washington residents were enrolled in health plans through the exchange. Of those, 139,700 people had purchased individual health plans; 119,958 people received subsidies to help pay for the coverage.
The average premium per person in October was $378 for a person without financial assistance and $152 for those with assistance.
Enrollments made possible by the Medicaid expansion, which extended coverage to more adults, constituted the majority of Washington Healthplanfinder enrollments; 464,547 new adults enrolled.
In Clark County, 7,983 people were enrolled in individual health plans through the exchange in October. Medicaid enrollments were more than three times that number at 28,089 people. That brings Clark County’s total Medicaid enrollment up to about 107,000.
At the state level, the Medicaid churn — the number of people with an individual plan switching to Medicaid or vice versa — didn’t fluctuate much throughout the year.
In February, March and April, about 1 percent of Medicaid enrollees had been enrolled in an individual health plan the previous month. For the next several months, that number was below 1 percent (about .8 percent).
The percentage of individual health plan enrollees who had been enrolled in Medicaid the previous month was about .05 percent throughout the year.
