Rhode Island: 3/31 Exchange QHP Total: 28K (UPDATE - 56.5K Medicaid)

Here we go...Rhode Island is the first state-based exchange out of the gate with an (unofficial, but specific) final tally of 3/31 QHP enrollments: Nearly 28,000 by midnight yesterday.

HealthSource RI spokeswoman Dara Chadwick said 27,968 individuals signed up for private plans through the new marketplace between Oct. 1 and the 11:59 p.m. deadline for 2014 enrollment, 1,840 of whom signed up Monday. The number is expected to rise as those who encountered technical difficulties or weren’t able to speak to a representative on Monday finish getting processed.

There's no update on the Medicaid number since March 8th, unfortunately, but this still locks down at least one key number. More to come, no doubt...

IMPORTANT: Now that my point regarding the "Paid/Unpaid" issue has been hammered home repeatedly (short version: around 85% have paid, another 5-10% will pay by mid-May), I'm going to start phasing out the "known unpaid" wedge of The Graph and The Spreadsheet. This does not mean that I'm going to stop accounting for unpaid enrollments completely; it just means that I'm going to switch everything over to the simplified, blanket "estimated 10% unpaid" status instead. This will make both the spreadsheet and the graph less cluttered and easier to read, while still remaining as accurate as I can reasonably make them.

The way I'm doing this is as follows: On the Week 26 worksheet I'll keep paid/unpaid separate through 3/31 data. On the (Extension: Week 27) worksheet and beyond, I'm scrapping the "unpaid" breakout for each state but will still keep the "90% paid or not due yet" number at the bottom. Once all of the 3/31 data is logged and everything is moved on to Week 27, the individual state Unpaid numbers will disappear completely, replaced by the blanket "90% paid" number.

UPDATE: The story has now been updated to include the Medicaid tally: 

Separately, the R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services told WPRI.com 56,531 individuals used HealthSource RI to sign up for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income individuals, from Oct. 1 to March 22. That’s far more than what state officials had forecast, which was for28,000 Medicaid sign-ups by Sept. 30 and 51,000 by March 2015.