NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
I have to admit, I wasn't expecting the official November HHS ACA enrollment report to be released until Friday (October's was released on 11/13), so I've spent the past few hours scrambling to update the ACASignups.net spreadsheet and graph. I'm happy to say that I've finished doing so.
I also have to admit to being slightly bothered by the failure to include so much as a footnote mention of ACASignups.net in this morning's front-page story about the HHS report, considering that this project is being run by more than a dozen dedicated dKos members, has a devoted following here and elsewhere, has been updated daily on a state-by-state basis, has been recognized by both Markos and Joan here at dKos, and even recently received some recognition by Sarah Kliff at WashPost's WonkBlog.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
After a TON of activity last week, the ACASignups.netspreadsheet was a bit quiet over the weekend. However, several new stats came out yesterday and today which have things moving again:
--The NY Times reports that 112,000 people enrolled in private plans--via Healthcare.gov--in the first week of December. Note that this doesn't include the other 14 state-run exchanges (plus DC). By comparison, only 27,000 enrolled in the Federal exchange throughout October, and 100,000 in November. So, that's a 4x increase the 2nd month followed by (so far) a 4x increase the third month.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Yup, that's right: After 9 weeks of charting, graphing and otherwise tallying everyone else enrolling in healthcare plans via the ACA exchanges, I'm happy and relieved to report that my wife and I finally went ahead and enrolled ourselves.
Living in Michigan, we had to use HealthCare.gov. I'm very happy to confirm that the reports from the HHS Dept. and other media sources are correct: It's working infinitely faster and more reliably than even a couple of weeks ago.
Since my wife is the principle name listed on our current plan, and since we're sticking with the same company anyway (just switching to one of the new ACA-compliant plans), she insisted on creating a brand-new user account under her name, figuring that there might be some confusion caused within the company system if the new plan was entered with my name as the principle one. I have no idea if this makes sense or not, but figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to start fresh with the most recent bugfixes in place.
Roughly 27,000 Americans signed up for insurance on the federal exchange on Tuesday, according to internal figures, bringing the site’s three-day enrollment total to 56,000. That figure is more than double the number who enrolled online in the entire month of October, which was almost 27,000.
Needless to say, I've been scrambling to bring the ACASignups.net spreadsheet up to speed this morning.
It seems that the "December Spike" or "Post-Thanksgiving Surge" or whatever you want to call it that Pres. Obama and the HHS Dept. were hoping for is happening, and in a big way. The announcement that the biggest hurdles in the ongoing Healthcare.Gov website debacle have been resolved is no doubt a major part of this dramatic turn of events.
In any event, I think I'll be hopping over the next few weeks.
The enrollment surge follows a round-the-clock effort by federal tech officials and contractors to make more than 400 software fixes and hardware upgrades since the site’s disastrous launch.
Already added to the ACASignups.net spreadsheet; see updated graph below.
As you can see, at the current rate, they'll hit roughly 2.9 million by 3/31/14.
About 100,000 people signed up for health insurance through the online federal exchange last month, a roughly four-fold increase from October even as a team of U.S. government and contractor programmers was fixing the troubled Affordable Care Act website, said a person familiar with program’s progress.
The preliminary November numbers reflect individuals who successfully selected a plan.
Now, there's some important points to keep in mind here:
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Yes, that's right--thanks to new data out of West Virginia and clarified/confirmed data out of California, the ACASignups.netspreadsheet just saw the Medicaid/SCHIP expansion total nearly double, to nearly 1.4 million.
Specifically, this article in USA Today (provided by dKos member ybruti), which notes that WV authorities personally contacted 118,000 people deemed eligible for Medicaid expansion and have already enrolled over 54,000 of them.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
've added a few new numbers to ACASignups.net, but the main changes are some new features:
--First, I'm "changing" the name from ObamacareSignups.net to ACASignups.net. Both will take you to the same spreadsheet, of course, but ACASignups.net is just shorter and easier to type. Use whichever one you feel is appropriate when reposting.
--Second, as I mentioned last week, by popular request, I've added graphical charts showing both the ACA Private Exchange enrollments as well as a comparison against the Massachusetts enrollment pattern of 2007.
--Third (and this is BRAND NEW), I've added the actual official HHS Dept. Per-State Goals for the 6-month enrollment period! This answers the question about where the mystical "7 million" figure came from, broken down by state (more about this below the fold).
--As far as I can tell, 2 of the other websites that were tracking ACA enrollments have abandoned the project: Advisory Board Company and Aaron Strauss. However, EnrollMaven.com is still keeping at it.
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Meanwhile, since the official HHS report last week, I've made some major changes to the ObamacareSignups.netspreadsheet:
Going forward, whenever possible I'm going to only be listing actual enrollments for each state. In this sense, my numbers will more closely parallel EnrollMaven.com, an openly anti-ACA website that's also been tracking Obamacare signups. I was highly skeptical of EnrollMaven at first, but their methodology seems to be sound. In addition, they've at least been completely frank about their negative opinion of the ACA, and many of my sources have turned out to be identical to theirs, so I've grown pretty comfortable with using them as a cross-check on my own numbers.
However, there's still a few important differences between their site and ObamacareSignups.net:
--I'm continuing to include Medicaid and SCHIP enrollments, which they don't track; this is still a crucially important factor, both for the success of the ACA as well as from a purely humanitarian POV
NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.
Meanwhile, since the official HHS report last week, I've made some major changes to the ObamacareSignups.netspreadsheet:
Going forward, whenever possible I'm going to only be listing actual enrollments for each state. In this sense, my numbers will more closely parallel EnrollMaven.com, an openly anti-ACA website that's also been tracking Obamacare signups. I was highly skeptical of EnrollMaven at first, but their methodology seems to be sound. In addition, they've at least been completely frank about their negative opinion of the ACA, and many of my sources have turned out to be identical to theirs, so I've grown pretty comfortable with using them as a cross-check on my own numbers.
However, there's still a few important differences between their site and ObamacareSignups.net:
--I'm continuing to include Medicaid and SCHIP enrollments, which they don't track; this is still a crucially important factor, both for the success of the ACA as well as from a purely humanitarian POV
