UPDATE: MARYLAND: First Official QHP Enrollment Update of 2016!!

Boy, that was fast! From today's Baltimore Sun:

The start of open enrollment on the state's online marketplace for health insurance went smoothly Sunday, officials said, with almost 780 people signing up by late afternoon and many others calling for information or meeting in person with professional advisers.

The Maryland health exchange launched free of the technical problems that disrupted enrollment in the first enrollment season beginning in the fall of 2013.

Performance improved in 2014. Consumers this time were promised a user-friendly website, a simpler application and better access to knowledgeable brokers to help them choose plans, exchange officials said.

Those moves were expected to help the state reach a goal of signing up 150,000 people in private plans, up from 115,000 last year.

"It was a good first day," said Andrew Ratner, exchange spokesman. "Especially being a Sunday."

By 4 p.m., 779 people had enrolled, including 461 in private plans and 136 in Medicaid, and 182 in dental plans.

I've never really tracked Dental plans (aside from the unfortunate "DentalGate" debacle a year ago), and Medicaid is obviously separate; it's the 461 QHP selections which are the focus here.

Obviously it's incredibly silly to try and extrapolate anything based on a single, partial day from a single state, but just for fun:

• Maryland is one of the few state exchanges which has provided an official internal open enrollment projection: 150,000.
• I've projected 14.7 million QHP selections nationally during OE3.
• 150K / 14.7 million = 1.02%.
• 461 actual QHP enrollments by 4pm presumably means perhaps 550 by the end of the day (it's a Sunday, but of course most people enroll online at any time).
• 550 = 1.02% of appx. 54,000 people nationally.
• Lopping off 4K to be cautious, that suggests appx. 50,000 people enrolling nationally on the first day (or around 38,000 via HealthCare.Gov)

Again, this is a very silly extrapolation, of course, but I'll be highly amused if there's an HHS Dept. press release tomorrow morning touting 38,000 people signing up via HC.gov on the 1st day...

UPDATE 11/2/15: Well there you go! The Maryland exchange has posted the final Day One numbers, and they're even better than I thought!

Day 1 numbers as 2016 open enrollment began for Maryland Health Connection on Sunday, Nov. 1:

Total enrollments: 1,608

• Private qualified health plan (QHP) enrollments: 847
• Medicaid: 413
• Dental: 348

Call Center calls received: 300

847 QHP selections on the first day?

Again, assuming this is proportionately representative nationally (and there's absolutely zero evidence that this is the case), that suggests around 80,000 QHP selections nationally on Day One!

Note: I have no idea whether that 847 number includes renewals or if it's new signups only.