Vermont data discrepancy mystery resolved: State reports included Medicaid

Last week, after the first official HHS report came out, I was perplexed by data discrepancies between the HHS and several state exchanges. Many of these turned out to be due to the dates on the reports not matching up, but others remained.

One of the remaining ones was in Vermont:

Vermont: I don't have a 12/15 report from the VT state exchange, but they did release one from 4 days earlier. It claimed 25,867 total QHP selections for 2015. The HHS report says it was 21,709...as of 4 days later. Again, a 4,100 difference.

Today I received my answer: It turns out that until now, the official state exchange enrollment reports were including both QHPs and Medicaid in both the "renewed" and "new" enrollment numbers. Medicaid/CHIP enrollments make up around 7,000 of the total (around 2,800 renewals and 4,300 new).

The broken-out numbers for Vermont, as of last night, directly from my contact at Vermont Health Connect, are as follows:

• 20,841 QHP renewals
• 2,829 Medicaid/CHIP renewals
• 3,045 QHP newly added
• 4,335 Medicaid/CHIP newly added

Totals: 23,886 QHPs checked out & 7,164 Medicaid/CHIP enrollments via the ACA exchange.

The VT exchange has also stated that they'll try and break out these numbers going forward, which is much appreciated.