More Notes of Interest from the 2nd HHS Monthly Report

I've moved the CA & NY additions from the original post over to this one, plus some additional items of note:

The exact number via HC.gov (thru 1/16/15) was already given out last week: 7,156,691. The exact number via the other 14 states (thru 1/17/15 or 1/18/15 in the case of California) is included in today's report: 2,383,004. Add them up and you get exactly 9,539,695.

Now, technically speaking, that exact number isn't precisely what it was as of January 16, because it includes 1 extra day for 13 of the state exchanges and 2 extra days for California. I have no clue why they did it that way, but whatever. Really, though, enrollment dropped off dramatically for a few days after the 15th, because that was the February-start deadline in 46 states +DC (including California), so I don't imagine more than 10-15,000 of this came in on the 17th or 18th.

So, worst-case scenario, Iwas  off by 0.4%. Best-case scenario, I was off by, say, 0.2%.

This is picking nits, however. The bottom line is that the confirmed QHP number is now 9.54 million nationally, through (about) 10 days ago, which is pretty much exactly what I had it pegged at.

• I'm especially proud to have nailed California (1,200,427); from page 38 of the report:

(5) California: The data that are being reported for California are for the following reporting period 11-15-14 --1-18-15. As of 1/18/15, plan selections for CA have been processed for 947,000 of 1,120,000 enrollees who entered the renewal process. As of 1-18-14, 0f the 947,000, 360,000 actively renewed their plan selections. The remaining 2014 enrollees are being transitioned to the Medicaid program or continue to be processed for renewal.

• I estimated that around 960K of the 2014 CA enrollees had been renewed. If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like the actual number was 947K, with some (?) more still to come.

As for New York (357,241), that actually surprised me a bit; I was estimating around 320K renewals, which, when added to the 83K new enrollees they've confirmed would total around 403K...and that was as of 12/20. Instead it's coming in at around 46K lower than that. Furthermore:

(10) New York is currently unable to distinguish between Marketplace plan selections for the 2014 coverage year and Marketplace plan selections for the 2015 coverage year during the period 11-15-2014-12/31-2014. Therefore, the plan selection data that are reported by New York may include a small number of plan selections from new consumers who were approved for a special enrollment period for 2014 Marketplace coverage between 11-15-14 and 12-31-2014.

So, NY's total is coming up lower than I expected, but other states are coming in higher to more than make up the difference.

• Most of the other state-based exchange numbers make sense (slightly higher or slightly lower than the numbers I have on hand, depending whether the most recent press release from the exchange itself is earlier or later than today's HHS report), but there's one exception: Hawaii.

According to this story from the Hawaii Reporter (in an interview with the head of the HI exchange), Hawaii was up to 16,100 QHP selections as of January 15th: 9,500 renewals, plus another 6,600 new enrollees. Today's report gives the total as just 6,868. At first I assumed that the reporter had screwed up the numbers, but then I noticed this on today's report (page 36):

(8) Total Marketplace plan selections do not include automatic reenrollees for the following four states: Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, and Massachusetts

Well, that makes sense for Maryland, Massachusetts and Idaho. The first two completely overhauled their software (requiring all 2014 enrollees to renew manually), and Idaho moved off of the federal exchange onto their own platform (again, requiring do-overs for all 2014 enrollees). That's why the numbers for all 3 states match pretty closely to what I already had...they didn't have any 2014 enrollees to "automatically" renew anyway.

However, Hawaii did not completely overhaul their system, so I'm not sure why their auto-renewals aren't included here. Therefore, I think it's safe to assume that the 9,500 renewals just didn't make the cut, and will eventually be added to the 6,868 new enrollees. Fortunately (?), unlike CA or NY, these numbers aren't large enough to skew the big picture (it's basically a rounding error at this point), but it's annoying nonetheless.

In any event, the actual confirmed number of QHP selections is now up to 9.56 million, or around 20K higher than the report issued today. I'm pretty sure it's actually up to 9.93 million, however, and will likely cross 10 million on Thursday.

Oh, for those who have asked: No, this doesn't change my personal projection of 12.5 million QHP selections by 2/15, because today's news is pretty much exactly what I've been expecting for a month now :)