Update: Health Sherpa enrolls nearly 60% of ALL federal exchange enrollees in first 18 days of 2024 Open Enrollment Period

Originally posted 11/16/23; updated 11/25/23

Disclosure: Health Sherpa is a paid sponsor of this site.

I've written about Health Sherpa's stunning ACA enrollment growth several times in the past. Today they issued a blog post update which continues that impressive news:

Less than two weeks into Open Enrollment, HealthSherpa has enrolled over 1.4 million people

HealthSherpa, the leading ACA enrollment platform, has helped more than 1.4 million people enroll in quality, affordable ACA health insurance plans between November 1 and November 11.* The percentage of consumers getting low-priced coverage is trending up vs. last year with 61% now enrolled in $0 plans. This is all a testament to the dedication of our agent and broker partners across the country who work tirelessly to connect people with affordable healthcare coverage.

OEP Insights for Nov 1 – Nov 11, 2023

• Policies: 1,092,617
• Covered Lives: 1,478,279

It's important to note that Health Sherpa only operates on the federal exchange for now, so this data doesn't include the 19 states operating their own ACA exchanges.

For comparison, HealthCare.Gov states enrolled 1,902,497 people total (across all interfaces) from 11/01 - 11/12. Total enrollment is almost certainly higher this year (President Biden teased over 1.6M via HC.gov alone in the first week), but 1.5M in 11 days is still stunningly impressive.

For what it's worth, last year the federal exchange accounted for 72.5% of all enrollments when you shift Virginia from the federal to state exchange status; this suggests that Sherpa would likely have enrolled perhaps 2.04 million people through Nov. 11th if they were operating in all 50 states +DC at the same level as they do in the federal exchange states.

This also strongly suggests that the official CMS Snapshot Report for "Week 2" (actually thru Nov. 11th only), due out at any time now, will likely be considerably more than 2 million enrollees...possibly as high as 4 million.

• 98% claiming a subsidy (!)
• $0.00 median net premium (!)
• 61% enrolled in $0-premium plans
• $686 median net subsidy

• Bronze: 1%
• Expanded Bronze: 27%
• Silver: 61%
• Gold: 11%
• Platinum: 0.2%

• Avg. Applicants/policy: 1.43
• 51% female, 49% male
• Median age: 47

• < 21: 0.7%
• 21 - 29: 12%
• 30 - 39: 19%
• 40 - 49: 23%
• 50 - 59: 26%
• 60+: 19%

*HealthSherpa data from November 1 through November 11, 2023. Data listed represent federal marketplace states only and are accurate to +/- 5%.

In addition, Sherpa head George Kalogeropoulos just tweeted out a quick update:

2 million people enrolled on @healthsherpas  since November 1!

Again, Sherpa only operates on the federal exchange states. Assuming a similar 72.5% proportion, that suggests Sherpa would have enrolled upwards of 2.75 million people if they operated at the same level in all 50 states +DC.

UPDATE 11/25/23: The CEO of Health Sherpa posted this update on LinkedIn:

Three key takeaways from the CMS snapshot of the first 18 days of Open Enrollment:

1. HealthSherpa is up nearly 70% year over year, with over 2.4 million people enrolled.
2. The entire Federal Marketplace is up 40% year over year, with almost 4.1 million people covered in the same time frame.
3. We estimate that 2 out of 3 new enrollments in Federal Marketplace states - people newly covered by the ACA - came through HealthSherpa.

• Policies: 1.79M
• Covered Lives: 2.43M

CMS reported 4.08M covered lives enrolled in exchange-based Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) thru 11/18 on the federal exchange. That means Sherpa & their affiliates/partners enrolled a stunning 60% of all HC.gov enrollees for the first 18 days of the 2024 Open Enrollment Period.

If you include the 19 state-based exchanges (which, again, Sherpa doesn't operate in), it makes up around 53%, although the SBMs only have enrollment data through 11/11. It's likely more like 44% of the actual total through the 18th, which would still be stunningly high.