The Mystery of Nevada's Enrollment Figure

Something interesting going on in Nevada. On 12/26, the official Nevada Health Link posted this to their Twitter feed:

Update: As of the 12/23/13 deadline to enroll, 12740 consumers confirmed QHP selections, 6219 have paid. Payment deadline is 12/30/13.

— Nevada Health Link (@NVHealthLink) December 26, 2013

Fair enough; 6,224 paid, 6,521 unpaid through 12/23.

Then, on January 7, they posted another solid update:

Update as of 1/4: 915,977 unique individuals visited Nevada Health Link. 17,673 consumers confirmed QHP selections, 10,547 have paid.

— Nevada Health Link (@NVHealthLink) January 7, 2014

Again, that makes sense. 10,547 paid, 7,126 unpaid as of January 4.

However, when the December HHS report came out, it gave the official number as 22,566...as of 12/28. Huh.

I wasn't sure how to proceed, but the HHS report supposedly trumps anything that comes out before it, so I figured "OK, I guess some additional numbers came in that didn't make it to the Twitter feed...and I guess HHS is counting them whether they paid or not, so I guess 22.5K vs. 17.6K is reasonable."

...until yesterday, when the Nevada Health Link posted yet another update:

Update as of 1/11: Nevada Health Link site eclipses 1 million unique visitors. 18,864 confirmed QHP selections, 11,409 consumers paid.

— Nevada Health Link (@NVHealthLink) January 14, 2014

Now we have a problem. They're claiming a total of only 18.8K as of 01/11 (and only 11.4K if counting paid accounts only) when HHS claims 22.5K as of 12/28. The only way this makes sense would be if the 18.8K number refers to accounts/households, since the HHS report refers to actual people.

I asked NHL about the discrepancy, and their response was pretty to the point:

@charles_gaba Please look at the weekly enrollment postings for Nevada Health Link here. Correct numbers are posted weekly.

— Nevada Health Link (@NVHealthLink) January 15, 2014

Hm. So, they're insistant that they have the right numbers, but don't explain the difference. I've already replied and will note if they clarify the issue.