Illinois: Believe it or not, there's already another update today!

The official HHS ACA Exchange Medicaid enrollment figure for Illinois released earlier today was 82,286. However, contributor sulthernao noted that the actual number of people enrolled in Medicaid under the ACA in Illinois is at least 53,714 higher. As he/she put it:

Illinois is a partnership state for Medicaid enrollment, has used SNAP autoenrollment, and early expansion experiment in Cook County. For this reason, the numbers reported by the Federal Government (ASPE) are a severe underestimate of the enrollment. People who apply directly through the state's website may not be counted.

I realize that this probably has no connection to the "mystery" 1.24 million Medicaid/CHIP enrollments that I just wrote about an hour or so ago, but it's been a very long day and I'm extremely tired, so until I hear a better explanation for those 1.24M, I'm lopping the 53K difference out of that "unspecified" total at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

The ABE site has received more than 146,000 applications for Medicaid and other social service benefits since Oct 1st. The state has enrolled more than 136,000 individuals in Medicaid coverage under the ACA through three different application methods: Cook County’s early enrollment program, County Care; an express enrollment program for SNAP food assistance recipients; and the ABE website.