Access Health CT officials said Wednesday that nearly 86,000 customers have signed up or re-enrolled for health insurance coverage through the exchange since Nov. 15.
There were 66,000 customers who re-enrolled in coverage they received in 2014 and about 19,402 new customers who signed up for one of the four plans offered by private insurance carriers on the exchange. Another 46,071 Medicaid customers have enrolled through the exchange since Nov. 15.
During the first year of the exchange about 207,020 individuals enrolled with Medicaid. Those individuals received a separate notice regarding their renewal period since there is no special enrollment period for low-income individuals who qualify for Medicaid.
There are another 6,000 Access Health CT customers who have until Friday to get coverage that starts on Jan. 1. Those customers have started, but not completed their applications.
Access Health CT CEO James Wadleigh said Connecticut is one of the only states that decided to autorenew individuals who purchased plans with private carriers during the first year of the Affordable Care Act.
There were 76,094 members enrolled with a private insurance company during the inaugural year of the Affordable Care Act. But Wadleigh said about 1,000 to 2,000 of those customers per week have been dropping out of their plans since the November.
“We are going to undertake a survey at the beginning of January to understand what those reasons were,” Wadleigh said. “They could have been anything from being covered by employer-sponsored insurance to other mitigating factors that we are not aware of at this point in time.”
There are another 1,300 customers, who have not re-enrolled with a private carrier and will lose their insurance at the end of December, if they do nothing.
HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange which does not include the 14 state-run exchanges, reported that enrollment this year was around 2.46 million customers since Nov. 15. It’s roughly split between new customers and returning ones.
Open enrollment runs through Feb. 15 and individuals who sign-up before Jan. 15 will receive coverage starting Feb. 1. Those who sign up on Feb. 15 will have coverage starting on March 1.
Since the start of the exchange, Connecticut has received about $174 million from the federal government to fund it.
