Crud. I overshot by 4%: 11.4 Million QHPs as of 2/15. Now calling for 11.8M by 2/28.

IMPORTANT UPDATE 2/18/15: HOLD THE PHONE...ACTUAL SELECTIONS 200K HIGHER AFTER ALL.

White House says 11.4 million signed up for insurance

About 11.4 million Americans are now signed up for private health coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the White House said Tuesday.

"We just got great news today," President Barack Obama said in a video posted on the White House's Facebook page.

"In the final day we had more consumers sign up than we have ever had," said Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell.

Crud. As I've been saying for the past few days, I changed my projections from 12.5M as of 2/15 to 11.85M as of 2/15, but 12.4M-12.5M as of 2/28.

I figured that the grand total had hit around 10.48 million as of 2/08 and another 1.4 million from 2/09 - 2/15, with an additional 500-600K tacked on during the extension period.

It now looks like I overshot by about 80K as of 2/08, and another 400K or so over the final week.

it remains to be seen whether I'm still correct about the addtional 500-600K, but even at the high end, the final tally will still only end up being 12.0 million even...

...which just happens to have been my original projection way back on November 14th in the first place.

LESSON: ALWAYS STICK WITH YOUR FIRST INSTINCTS.

Actually, the offical statement is "about 11.4 million", which means that it's likely a good 30K less than that; if it was 11.4 million or higher, the statement would have been "11.4 million" or "OVER 11.4 million".

That being the case...and given that the final surge was less impressive than I was figuring (even accounting for Saturday's outage), I'm now going the other way and assuming only perhaps 400K during the overtime/extension period.

That would bring the total up to 11.8 million by 2/28.

The reality is, I have no clue how many "In Line By Midnighters" there were, and won't know that until tomorrow at the earliest.

On the plus side, on a personal level:

• HHS Dept's Official Projection (range): 10.3 million - 11.2 million
• MY Official Projection (range): 11.9 million - 12.5 million
• Actual Number: 11.4 million

HHS undershot by 2% -10%.

I overshot by 4% - 10%.

In other words, I ended up being a bit optimistic, but just as accurate as the entire Health & Human Services Dept. of the United States.

With a considerably smaller budget and staff, I might add.