Isle Obamacare roll inflated, state says

The Hawaii Health Connector inflated the number of residents enrolled in Obamacare in 2015, state officials contend.

The nonprofit Connector, assigned to enroll Hawaii residents in medical insurance under the Affordable Care Act, repeatedly said it signed up nearly 40,000 people in coverage last year, despite federal reports stating otherwise.

Now that the state has taken over functions of the Connector and moved enrollment to the federal marketplace, healthcare.gov, Gov. David Ige’s administration told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that number is bogus.

“The 40,000 just is not a real number,” said Laurel Johnson, Ige’s deputy chief of staff. “It’s so high as to be ridiculous. The prior estimate of 40,000 cannot be verified by any state or federal database.”

Hawaii’s Obamacare enrollment numbers have been all over the place depending on the source. Hawaii Medical Service Association confirmed it enrolled approximately 12,000 members on the Connector last year, while Kaiser Permanente Hawaii said it signed up 7,300 individuals on the exchange. Combined, HMSA and Kaiser signed up about half the number Connector officials have claimed.

Ige’s representatives told lawmakers at a briefing Wednesday that the latest federal figures show 16,803 people were covered under Obamacare in 2015 and that 15,400 have signed up for coverage so far this year. Johnson said there is no way to verify actual exchange enrollments for last year because Connector reporting systems have been shut down.

Charles Gaba, a Michigan Web developer who tracks nationwide ACA enrollments, has written at least a half-dozen times about Hawaii’s fuzzy Obamacare numbers on his blog at ACASignups.net.

“Hawaii: 8,200 enrollees. Or 38,000. Or somewhere in between. I think,” Gaba wrote in a post last year. “One day it’s 16,000 (more than twice 2014’s total), a month later it’s only 13,300, then just hours later, I receive ‘confirmation’ (directly from the exchange director, supposedly) that it’s actually 23,000 specifically for 2015 policies. What the heck is going on here?”

In March the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, the agency that oversees Obamacare, announced that 8,200 Hawaii residents had enrolled in ACA coverage. Then in June the figure was 8,802. At the end of September, sign-ups jumped to 16,803, the latest data available.

The Connector’s former head Jeff Kissel said in a phone call from Texas on Thursday that he stands by the “nearly 40,000” number.

“Unfortunately, I really can’t explain that (16,803) number since I don’t have any access to current files,” Kissel said. “I would, however, point out that our reports were always based on households, and we had to provide individual enrollees by performing a special system query. Those are the numbers we identified, and they’re in the company records the state is in possession of now. If the people in charge today can’t reconcile it, I’m sorry. I can’t do anything about it.”

Last year the feds determined that Hawaii was not in compliance with Obamacare, the federal program that requires Americans to obtain medical insurance or pay tax penalties, in part because it wasn’t financially self-sustaining.

Ige’s administration was forced to abandon the troubled Connector, which had struggled since its launch in October 2013 to meet enrollment targets, provide satisfactory service and raise enough money for operations. The Connector burned through $130 million of $204 million in federal money granted to the state to build the exchange.

Administration officials told lawmakers this week they will need $6 million annually to continue the outreach, call center and other functions. Open enrollment for Obamacare coverage began Nov. 1 and concludes Jan. 31.