Minnesota: 5,100 paper app shoots March QHP avg. up to 3.1x Feb. rate

Minnesota was already doing pretty well, having surpassed their own internal goal of 135K QHP/Medicaid combined as of yesterday, of which over 36K were QHPs...but they released quite a jaw-dropper just a day later, with the QHP figure leaping up another 5,097 thanks to pushing through a mountain of paper applications.

Numbers released Wednesday at the MNsure board's regular meeting actually look better than those the agency highlighted in a Tuesday press release. On Wednesday, MNsure was able to add people who enrolled using paper applications  – and now the exchange can announce it has enrolled 148,068 people, including 41,273 people who used the exchange to purchase private health plans.

This brings MN's totals to 41,273 exchange QHPs and 106,795 new Medicaid enrollees.

The impact on the projection table?

In February, Minnesota averaged 122 QHPs/day. Prior to today's update, they were averaging 180/day in March, a 48% increase over February.

With these paper additions, this has skyrocketed to 385/day...over 3.1x February's rate. 

UPDATE: Oh yeah...another contributor provided the actual dashboard report, which had slightly lower QHP/Medicaid numbers (from the day before, I assume) but also noted 677 SHOP employees enrolled. Since that's a "household" number, I apply my usual 1.8x factor to get 1,218 SHOP enrollees.