Pennsylvania: Pennie announces ~6,500 new exchange enrollments during COVID SEP so far

I just received the following COVID Enrollment Period update from Pennie, Pennsylvania's new state-based ACA exchange. This appears to be part of an official report which they're still working on.

The "Existing" numbers refer to current Pennie enrollees who are taking advantage of the COVID SEP to switch to a different plan mid-year; this is something which usually isn't allowed, even during traditional Special Enrollment Periods (SEPs), but Pennie, along with HealthCare.Gov and many of the other state-based exchanges, are allowing them to do so during this period.

There's an obvious reason for this, too: The impending passage of the American Rescue Plan will mean dramatically improved/expanded subsidies for ACA enrollees, including many who haven't been eligible for them until now. This means millions of Americans who enrolled in Bronze plans because they weren't eligible for subsidies will be able to upgrade to Silver or Gold; it also means many people will become eligible for $0-premium plans who currently aren't, and so on.

The biggest question I have (which I've inquired about) is how the 6,559 new SEP enrollees (60% COVID-specific, 40% for other reasons) compares against the same time period in prior years. On the surface the 60/40 split makes it looks like it's a 150% increase (2.5x), but that could be misleading, as some of the SEP enrollees may be entering the wrong "reason" for their enrollment (it doesn't really matter one way or the other, but I'm still curious how it compares with typical SEP enrollment in Pennsylvania).

In any event, this amounts to 298/day over the first 22 days of the COVID SEP.

• 60% of New Enrollees since 2/15 are connected to a COVID-reason SEP, while only 37% of Existing Enrollees are connected to a COVID-reason SEP.
• Just over 50% of total enrollments since 2/15 are connected to a COVID-reason SEP