The Massachusetts exchange has released their weekly dashboard report, which includes actual QHP selections and payments, although that data only runs through 12/29.
Add them up and you get 79,842 total QHP selections, of which 55,260 have paid their first premium and are fully enrolled. This may sound like only a 69% payment rate, but remember that many of the remaining 24,582 aren't scheduled to have their current coverage dropped until the end of January and thus aren't even expecting their new policy to kick in until February 1st anyway. As always, the payments are a rolling average, and will ebb & flow until around mid-March (after which they should stabilize at around 88% at any given time).
For example, on Wednesday the 31st, the MA exchange issued a press release which stated that the total number who have paid in time for January 1st coverage is "over 50,000":
They just released today's daily dashboard report, and the QHP eligibility determinations have gone up by another 6,263 people. Every day since Nov. 15th, roughly 50% of the QHP determinations have gone on to actually select a plan that very same day; the rate has ranged from 45% - 55% but always hovers near the 50% mark. Assuming this is still the case, that should mean at least 3,100 more QHP selections as of last night, for a total of around 80,600 to date.
In addition, MA has confirmed 139,063 new Medicaid/MassHealth enrollees, which have immediate effect.
As a side note, this means that MA has now enrolled more than 2.5x as many people in private plans for 2015 as they did all of last year.
OK, I actually have 3 different sources for these Massachusetts numbers, and the dates and classifications overlap a bit so bear with me.
First, we have today's daily MA Health Connector Dashboard report, which states that there have been 148,453 QHP determinations thorugh yesterday (12/29). Assuming 50% of these have selected plans, that's around 74,200 QHP selections to date. In addition, the 134,803 Medicaid (MassHealth) enrollments are already locked in.
However, there's also this story from Felice J. Freyer of the Boston Globe from 12/28 (about a jaw-droppingly poor bit of timing by private, for-profit corporation Dell to install some sort of major software update which caused the payment system to be unavailable for 12 hours on the payment deadline), which pins down the numbers a bit further:
This weekly dashboard report is really just an official breakdown of the numbers I reported a couple of days ago, as it only runs through 12/23, but it's still good to have an official confirmation of everything:
As of midnight last night, the Massachusetts Health Connector just reported:
40,065 QHPs selected and paid for
34,138 QHPs selected but not paid for yet
74,203 QHPs selected total, with a 54% payment rate so far
MA has extended the payment deadline until 12/28, so the other 34K still have 5 days (including today) to make their first payment; if they miss that deadline but still pay up, they'll still be covered starting on February 1st.
Assuming 25,200 of these folks make their first payment by the 28th, they'll hit my 88% "rule of thumb" rate for January. Over 8,100 people made payments yesterday alone, so I'm not terribly concerned about this issue. It'll be interesting to see how many make the cut, given all the "but how many have PAID???" fuss and bother last year (last year, MA & WA were the only states which reported paid only numbers to HHS, but it was still messy in MA's case given their technical problems).
Today is the final day for Massachusetts residents to enroll in a private healthcare plan if they want coverage to start on January 1st. As of last night, they had a total of 248,711 eligibility determinations, of which 131,732 are for private QHP policies (the other 117K have already been enrolled in Medicaid, aka "MassHealth", which is impressive in and of itself).
So, how many of those nearly 132K people have actually selected a plan? Well, since open enrollment started on 11/15, anywhere between 45-55% of total QHP determinations as of that day have also selected a plan. If that was the case here, I'd say that the number is around 50%, or around 66,000, which would be an impressive 4,600 spike over yesterday's confirmed 64.1K.
UPDATE: OK, I've received the official total: As of midnight last night, 67,759 people had selected a policy, or 51.4%. I've also confirmed that about 47% had paid their first premium already...32,000 people, or more than the total enrollees as of last April.
On Friday I discovered that my estimate of roughly 60% of Massachusetts "determined eligible for QHPs" actually selecting a plan was way too high; the actual ratio was closer to 48% overall, meaning that my prior estimate of about 62K QHP selections was too high; the actual number was 53,490 as of Thursday the 18th, which is still excellent, just not as great as I thought it was.
Today I received confirmation directly from the exchange that total enrollments (ie, selected plans) are up to 61,470 as of this morning, which means that the ratio is indeed starting to move up, just later and not as quickly as I had thought (61,470 / 124,403 QHP determinations is just shy of 50%).
OK, it looks like my theory about MA's "QHPs as % of Determinations" theory was wrong; I assumed that it would have started increasing from 50% over the past week, intstead it dropped to about 48% (or held steady at 52% if you include the "plans in cart" which neither I nor the MA exchange is doing anyway).
Therefore, the bad news is that the official total is around 8,300 fewer than I thought: 53,490 thorugh yesterday. The good news is that this is still an excellent number, and there's still tens of thousands of people who've started the process who have until next Tuesday to wrap it up.
In addition, remember my snark from 11/16 about "ONLY 3.5% HAVE PAID!!"? Well, guess what: That percentage is up to 34%, and they still have 5 days to pay (I presume they're dealing with a flood of payments at the moment).
The Medicaid tally holds at 98,530 since it doesn't include yesterday.
Chalk up another 4,433 QHP eligibility determinations for MA yesterday. Assuming 60% of those have selected a plan, the cumulative total for 2015 should be up to around 61,800 people to date.
As of mid-April, Massachusetts had only enrolled a total of 31,695 people. That means that assuming I'm close, the Bay State should double their 2014 QHP enrollment by tomorrow.
In addition, their Medicaid enrollments are closing in quickly on the 100K mark (98,530), and should easily cross it tomorrow as well.
