As I noted last week, Washington State is doing things a bit backwards from just about every other state...instead of reporting the total number of QHP selections and then, in a few cases, also reporting the number of enrollees who have actually paid their first premium, the WA HealthBenefit Exchange is only reporting enrollments after they've made their first payment.

On the one hand, I wish every state was reporting this number. On the other hand, unlike MA & VT (which report both numbers) or Rhode Island (which is reporting both, but only including the total selections after subtracting those who are past-due on their payments), WA isn't including the total selections at all. This makes things a bit tricky for me, since I'm trying to report both numbers.

As a result, what I'm doing for the moment is assuming the standard 88% payment rate, which means that today's announcement of 139,000 QHP enrollments should mean roughly 158,000 total selections:

HEALTHSOURCE RI RELEASES ENROLLMENT, DEMOGRAPHIC AND VOLUME DATA THROUGH FEBRUARY 7, 2015

Posted on February 11, 2015 | By HealthSource RI

PROVIDENCE – HealthSource RI (HSRI) has released enrollment data, certain demographic data and certain volume metrics through Saturday, February 7, 2015, for Open Enrollment.

RENEWAL UPDATE
As of February 7, 2015, 79% of Year One customers have renewed (selected a plan) for 2015
(77% of renewing customers paid the first month’s premium).
Total New Customers: 8,547 (7,372 paid)
Total Renewed Customers: 20,240 (19,617 paid)
Total HealthSource RI enrollments for 2015 coverage: 28,787 (26,989 paid)

*Note: Individuals who have selected a plan but not paid by their selected coverage effective date become cancelled; reported enrollment values (plan selections, paid and unpaid) will fluctuate with potential net decrease due to plan selection cancellation, as of the passage of the January coverage payment deadline.

Me, 3 days ago:

On Wednesday the 11th, HHS should issue a report including all HC.gov QHP selections as of Friday the 6th. I'm expecting the total to be roughly 7.75 million, or about 276K for the week.

HHS Dept., just now:

OK, that means I was off by 324 people this week or exactly 625 people cumulatively. That's 0.1% for the week, or 0.008% cumulatively.

This is possibly the dumbest story to make Major Headlines this week, but apparently GOP Speaker of the House John Boehner uttered the word "ass" in public.

Considering that VP Biden was caught on tape referring to the signing of the Affordable Care Act as a "Big F*cking Deal", I'm not quite sure I understand why Boehner saying "ass" is newsworthy, but what the hell: Here's my own connection to that "story": About 1:20 into this Al Jazeera America segment from March 26th, Boehner says "What the hell is this, a joke??" referring to the 2-week "extension period" tacked onto the end of last spring's Open Enrollment Period.

Oh, yeah...immediately after he rhetorically asks, "What the hell is this, a joke??", the segment turns to...me! (This has been, to date, my only televised appearance):

As of last Thursday, total QHP selections on the Massachusetts exchange were up to just shy of 119K. Between the weekend and the massive snowstorm that MA is digging out of, they went 5 days without a dashboard report, until today:

As always, I only have the QHP determinations to go by between their weekly reports. As of yesterday, those stood at 221,877, Subtract the 214,027 as of 2/05 and that's another 7,850 QHP determinations. Assuming 50% of those followed through with selecting a plan (a reasonable assumption at this point) and that's another 3,900 QHPs, or at least 122,600 QHPs to date.

Of course, that means that there's also another 99,000 people who started the process and have been approved for a private policy, but who may--or may not--have actually completed the process. Heading into the final 5 days, I presume that more and more of this enrollee pool will be scratched off the list; if, say, 80% of these folks follow through, Massachusetts would hit at least 200,000 QHPs by Sunday night.

Last year, I started out tracking just 2 numbers: Exchange-based QHPs and Medicaid via official ACA expansion provisions. As time went on, I gradually added other types of Obamacare-specific healthcare policy enrollments:

• Off-exchange policies which were compliant with the new law;
• People who were already eligible for traditional Medicaid prior to expansion (and in non-expansion states) but who were only "drawn out of the woodwork" to sign up thanks to outreach efforts, educational programs and streamlining of the enrollment process in many states
• People who were transferred over from other existing low-income state-run healthcare programs (often with shaky funding) into Medicaid proper;
• Enrollees in small business policies via the ACA's SHOP program (granted, this never ended up being more than a rounding error...less than 80K total)
• Young adults aged 19 - 25 who were allowed to stay on their parent's plan thanks specifically to the ACA

As noted earlier, there's a lag between the exchange-based QHP data from HC.gov vs. the Oregon Insurance Division, so you can ignore that number. However, the off-exchange number should be accurate (and this is the official source for it anyway):

Members enrolled,
Nov. 15-Feb. 1
On Healthcare.gov 86,606
Outside of Healthcare.gov 95,859
Total 182,465

Last week the off-exchange total was 92,872, so that's about a 3,000 enrollee increase, for whatever that's worth.

According to the HC.gov weekly snapshot report, as of 2 days earlier (1/30), Oregon's exchange-based total was 94,126...slightly less than the off-exchange number. It'll be interesting to see if that ratio holds steady next week after the final deadline surge goes through.

Remember "Florida Health Choices", the brainchild of Republican Senator Marco Rubio which was supposed to be the Florida GOP's response to the Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges?

The Florida Republican Party flushed $900,000 in startup funds into a website/"exchange" which signed up a whopping 30 paying customers in 6 months, at a cost of $30,000 apiece...or between 46x - 81x as much per enrollee as the "wasteful" HealthCare.Gov.

Of course, it didn't help that "Florida Health Choices" didn't actually sell, you know, "health insurance" but was basically hawking discount coupons for dental checkups and the like.

This is an important part of the Affordable Care Act debate which I've yet to see anyone else bring up.

I've written about this many times before, and now it's just gotten surreal. Depending on your source, Michigan supposedly has somewhere between 477,000 - 500,000 residents eligible for ACA Medicaid expansion...but they passed the lower end of that range months ago, the upper end several weeks ago, and as of yesterday, reported that a whopping 547,000 people are now enrolled in the Healthy Michigan program:

Healthy Michigan Plan Enrollment Statistics

Beneficiaries with Healthy Michigan Plan Coverage: 546,807
(Includes beneficiaries enrolled in health plans and beneficiaries not required to enroll in a health plan.)

*Statistics as of February 9, 2015 
*Updated every Monday at 3 p.m.