The last hard enrollment number I had for Connecticut was 108,105 people enrolled through December 13, just 2 days before the original deadline for January coverage. However, like most states, CT bumped their deadline out an extra few days, so they ended up with 4 more days to sign people up before the January cut-off. It turns out they tacked on another 5,000 people in that time:
Access Health CT, the organization responsible for enrolling people in Obamacare, did not release numbers on how many people are enrolled in policies that take effect Jan. 1. Instead, they released a combined number of who's enrolled now and who will be enrolled next year: 113,161.
...Access Health CT noted that nearly 12,000 people who are currently enrolled are in plans that will not exist next year and are therefore not covered. They can still re-enroll, but they'll have a gap in coverage in January.
At this point in 2015, 100,314 people were scheduled to have Obamacare insurance coverage on Jan. 1, 2016.
With the HHS Dept. having just released the total number of 2017 Open Enrollment Period enrollees through the extended December deadline, I've been seeing a lot of comments on Twitter along the following:
Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia highest Obamacare enrollees... lol... Trumpers should have listened!#ACA#lawrenceodonnell
I did this for the heck of it back in 2015 and it's become sort of an annual tradition for me. On the one hand, with the 4th year added this layout is starting to get too confusing. On the other hand, it's looking very much like this will be the final year of ACA open enrollment anyway, so I guess that's a moot point.
It's important to bear in mind that the first Open Enrollment Period (for 2014 coverage) lasted a whopping six months...and even that was extended by 15 days due to the massive technical problems during the October 2013 launch period. Technically speaking, the 2014 open enrollment period lasted a total of 197 days, which has been time-compressed so the starting and ending dates match the other three years. That 15-day extension is also why the first big "surge" appears to come earlier on the graph than it actually did--it's been "pushed back" a bit.
As noted in my "Week 7 Plus" December Deadline Snapshot Report write-up, along with the updated State-by-State write-up, while I was dead on target in predicting enrollments up through the original 12/15 deadline at HC.gov, I seriously overestimated the additions who signed up during the 4-day "extension period". I figured it'd be anywhere from 750K - 1.0M; instead it was just 350,000 or so. However, since there are still several million auto-renewals left to be added to the mix, this doesn't necessarily mean anything; it could simply be a half-million or so more auto-renewals instead of active renewals will be added later this week.
I've confirmed 8.8 million QHP selections nationally to date. That leaves almost exactly 5.0 million more enrollees needed to reach this year's target of 13.8 million by January 31st. A pretty tall order, but we can cut that down to size:
IMPORTANT: The total enrollment numbers for the 39 HC.gov states are quite a bit behind last year. However, this is mainly because auto-renewals haven't been added to the totals yet for those 39 states yet. This makes it impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison vs. last year for those states.
Since auto-renewals have already been added to most of the state-based exchange numbers but not to the federal exchange numbers, it gets a little tricky to visualize. The blue sections show how far ahead 11 states are based on their status. I'd expect any state which has already added in their auto-renewals to have reached around 85% of my final target, while those which haven't added them to the tally should only be at around 65%.
Based on that, among the states with auto-renewals baked in:
Today, as part of a deadline reminder press release (WA is among 3 states which are still letting people sign up for January coverage as late as midnight Friday), they gave a rough update:
The Washington Health Benefit Exchange today is warning customers without 2017 coverage that this Friday, Dec. 23 at 11:59 p.m. is the deadline to sign up for health and dental plans through Washington Healthplanfinder that begin on Jan. 1.
OK, for the first time this Open Enrollment Period, my expections were off base...significantly. The past two years, HHS was posting "weekly snapshot" reports of enrollments at the federal exchange (HC.gov). This year they switched to 2-week reports, but today they decided to issue a special "week-plus" version which covers enrollments through the (extended) 12/19 deadline for coverage starting January 1st.
As I noted last Friday, based on the massive surge in enrollments (a record-breaking 670,000 people) on the final original deadline day (12/15), I bumped up my estimates for the 4-day extension period from my original 6 million or so up to an even 7 million (assuming 250K/day). However, I later realized that two of those days fell over the weekend, when enrollments drop off substantially (and since the original deadline had already passed, even the extended deadline wouldn't make much difference weekend-wise). I pulled back my projection somewhat to 6.75 million.
However, it turns out I was still overestimating, although the numbers are still pretty impressive:
Last week, the Rhode Island exchange reported 27,555 QHP enrollees as of 12/10, a tiny increase over the prior week mainly due to auto-renewed enrollees dropping out, cancelling out most of the increase.
Rhode Island is one of 3 states which are still taking enrollments for January, but they've released another report (thorugh 12/17) which brings the tally up to
INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 17, 2016
Yay! The DC exchange has issued their first OE4 enrollment report of the year! Boo! It doesn't include renewing enrollees (either active or passive):
DC Health Link Enrollment up Nearly 50% at First Deadline for 2017 Coverage • 60% of new enrollees are 34 years old and younger
Washington, DC – Today, the DC Health Benefit Exchange Authority (HBX) released preliminary individual marketplace data for the fourth open enrollment period for DCHealthLink.com, the District’s online health insurance marketplace for individuals, families and small businesses.
These preliminary data show that through December 19, 2016:
I noted a couple of weeks ago that Massachusetts has a unique methodology for reporting their ACA exchange enrollments. For one thing, they only officially count people who sign up for policies as "enrollees" after they've made their first monthly premium payment. In addition, like some other state exchanges, they "pre-renew" their current enrollees before the December deadline, and then reduce the official number from there as some people choose not to renew their coverage. As a result, instead of their "QHP selection" tally increasing, it actually starts out huge and then drops a bit as the enrollment period continues.
As a result, instead of 260,275 QHP selections, their number is a bit lower today:
Through Sunday, the 18th: 224,211 2017 enrollments. Plus, an additional 26,868 plans selected but unpaid at this point.
