New York: SHOP QHPs double from 5K to 10K

OK, I meant to post this yesterday but had to double-check a couple of things with the reporter first. He confirmed that a) the 750K figure was slightly outdated (NY announced a higher total enrollment figure shortly after he posted the story), b) these 10,000 people are indeed enrolled in New York's SHOP exhange for small businesses and are therefore not part of the individual private exchange QHP figure, and c) the 10K figure does include dependents as well as employees.

Therefore, NY's SHOP total just doubled, from around 5,000 as of January to 10,000 today.

Close to 4,000 small businesses across New York state have enrolled their employees in the state's online marketplace for buying health insurance.

The six-month-old market, called an exchange, has become a noteworthy part of the federal Affordable Care Act. The law aims to spark the largest expansion of health insurance nationwide sinceMedicare and Medicaid were created nearly 50 years ago.

Those businesses represent 10,000 employees and their dependents, from each region of the state, including the Capital Region. The average business on the exchange has four or five employees, says Donna Frescatore, executive director of the state exchange (named New York State of Health).

Those 10,000 employees, and their dependents, represent 1.3 percent of the almost 750,000 New Yorkers who have enrolled on the exchange at this point.

Don't ask me why, since I know that the SHOP numbers have been pretty scattershot, minimal and disconnected from the rest of the enrollments (both QHPs and Medicaid), but I'm starting to get a sense that even my fairly rosy projection may be underestimating the strength of the final push.

I might be bumping up the 6.58M number some more later today, will have to check a few more things first...