Dennis Domrzalski, Reporter - Albuquerque Business First
New Mexico’s health insurance companies have enrolled more than 51,000 people in insurance plans since October, when enrollment for the Affordable Care Act began, the New Mexico Office of the Superintendent of Insurance said Monday.
That includes 26,400 residents who enrolled in individual plans through the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, another 10,000 who chose individual plans off the exchange. It also includes about 14,000 small and large group members whose companies bought off-exchange policies, said Aaron Ezekiel, head of Affordable Care Implementation for the OSI.
Insurance companies are required to report their enrollment figures to the OSI, and the figures were as of March 31, Ezekiel said.
The latest numbers represent a surge of last-minute enrollees and are better than what officials expected, Ezekiel said. However, the numbers are short of the goals New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange originally projected. Original predictions had individual enrollment through the federal exchange at near 80,000 and enrollment through the state’s small business, or SHOP, exchange at 8,000.
“I give New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange officials a lot of credit; they have made a big difference,”
Ezekiel said.
In addition to the new private plan enrollees, 103,000 state residents have enrolled in Medicaid plans since October, bringing total Medicaid enrollment in the state to 603,000, according to the New Mexico Human Services Department.
On April 2, Presbyterian Health Plan and New Mexico Health Connections, the state’s startup nonprofit insurer, reported they had enrolled a combined 20,000 state residents in insurance plans since October.
Presbyterian had enrolled 9,852 members, and NMHC had enrolled more than 9,000 and was expecting to pass 10,000 enrollees.