Cost-per-enrollee in each state’s Exchange

by Jay Angoff, FindJustice.com, May 7, 2014  (excerpts)

...There was a very large variation in cost-per-enrollee among the Exchanges. Of the 15 state-run Exchanges, the state with the lowest cost-per-enrollee was California, at $758, while the state with the highest cost-per-enrollee was Hawaii, at $23,899. Excluding Hawaii and the District of Columbia, which were outliers, the state Exchange with the highest cost-per-enrollee was Massachusetts, at $5,681. Hawaii’s cost-per-enrollee was 32 times California’s, while Massachusetts’s was 7 times California’s. ...

The five states with the lowest cost-per-enrollee are all states whose governors and/or legislatures have resisted the ACA, and whose Attorneys-General challenged the constitutionality of the ACA. They are as follows:  

State Cost-per-enrollee  

• Florida $ 76
• Texas $ 102
• Georgia $ 240
• Virginia $ 376
• Michigan $ 427  

The five jurisdictions with the highest cost-per-enrollee include three whose elected leaders support the ACA and two that oppose it. Those five are as follows:  

State Cost-per-enrollee  

• Hawaii $23,899
• District of Columbia $12,467
• North Dakota $ 7,089
• Delaware $ 6,825
• Wyoming $ 6,323

The common denominator among these five jurisdictions is that they are very small--all with populations of less than 1.4 million--and thus must spread the fixed costs of the Exchange over a very small base. Nevertheless, Hawaii and DC, which run their own Exchanges, had costs-per-enrollee that were far higher than those in any of the federally-run small states--almost twice as high in DC, and more than three times as high in Hawaii....

read ... Kaiser Health News

Background: Final Deadline: Hawaii Spends the Most and Gets the Least from Obamacare