Meanwhile, Medicaid/CHIP enrollment is holding steady at 74.2 million...for now...

I used to track the monthly Medicaid/CHIP enrollment reports issued by CMS, watching as the numbers rose dramatically thanks to ACA Medicaid expansion.

I pretty much stopped doing that about a year ago, however, since the expansion numbers have mostly petered out. ACA Medicaid expansion actually has continued to climb a bit more since January, and is likely somewhere around 16 million people as of now, but it's also been partly cancelled out by a slight drop in standard Medicaid enrollment as the economy has continued to improve in general. In short, there's little reason to keep writing the same update every month.

However, it's been awhile, so I figured it'd be a good time to check in, especially given that CHIP funding ran out at the end of September and some states are therefore already starting to run out of funds for the program. CMS just posted the September Medicaid/CHIP enrollment report:

Medicaid and CHIP Total Enrollment

74,161,192 individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP in the 51 states reporting September 2017 data. 68,239,620 individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and 5,921,572 individuals were enrolled in CHIP (please see contextual information below regarding CHIP enrollment). Nearly 16.3 million additional individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP in September 2017 as compared to the period prior to the start of the first Marketplace open enrollment period (July - Sept. 2013), in the 49 states that reported relevant data for both periods, representing nearly a 29 percent increase over the baseline period. (Connecticut and Maine aren't included because they did not report data for both periods). View graph of Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment Growth over Baseline.

CMS says above that the net increase in Medicaid/CHIP enrollment from Sept. 2013 - Sept. 2017 is 16.3 million, but when you look at the very graph they link to, the difference is nearly 17.4 million...nearly 1.1 million higher. Some of this is explained by this footnote, which notes that Connecticut and Maine aren't included in both periods:

All states reported enrollment data for September 2017; however, only 49 states reported both September 2017 enrollment data and data from July-September 2013. These 49 states reported total enrollment in September 2017 of over 73 million individuals, and July-September 2013 average enrollment of over 56.8 million. For September 2017, CMS is reporting growth of 16,280,257 compared to July-September 2013 in the 49 states reporting data for both periods.

Meanwhile, I guess it's supposed to be "good" news that "only" 5.9 million children were enrolled in the CHIP program in September, seeing how funding has been cut off and all. The reason this number is lower than the 9 million figure generally mentioned is because 9 million includes children who are only covered by CHIP for a portion the year.

Medicaid Child and CHIP Total Enrollment

Nearly 35.6 million individuals are enrolled in CHIP or are children enrolled in the Medicaid program in the 48 states that reported child enrollment data for August 2017. Children enrolled in the Medicaid program and individuals enrolled in CHIP make up almost 50.4 percent of total Medicaid and CHIP program enrollment. View graph of Medicaid Child and CHIP Enrollment.

Anyway, here's a simplified version of the table breaking out all 74.2 million enrollees by state: