Vermont's numbers can be a bit squirrelly, but in this case they're very specific about 46.8K being exchange QHPs (VT doesn't allow off-exchange enrollments anyway, and the the 30-40K figure is the same from the last update).
As of Monday morning, 46,800 individuals had enrolled to be covered with private insurance either from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont or MVP Health Care. An additional 30,000 to 40,000 people were enrolled through their employers, Yahr said. The federal target enrollment was 56,000 by Monday.
If that's not a typo or a misunderstanding on my part, it means that Vermont has just skyrocketed to 4.5x their February enrollment rate.
OK, after all of today's excitement it's back to the state-by-state grind...
More than 55,000 Vermonters have picked a health plan through Vermont Health Connect since open enrollment began in October and more than 43,000 are fully enrolled in new coverage. That means roughly 12,000 Vermonters have yet to pay their first premium or are having problems completing the process.
Contributor deaconblues has done the math for me this time, which I appreciate since my brain is fried today:
I know Vermont is a tricky beast, but this article specifically says 55K through the Vermont Health Connector (no bulk transfers or SHOP)
The current numbers on the spreadsheet say:
QHP: 28,950 (18,507 paid + 10,443 unpaid)
Medicaid: 21,525
Total: 50,475
This would imply they've newly added about 4,500. If you prorate the 55K across QHP and Medicaid (58/42), and use the paid QHP as a "hard number", you get
OK, the cutesy title is kind of a misnomer; my two previous entries didn't use that title originally...but they should have, and do now.
March 31st is supposed to be the final day to enroll in QHPs via the exchanges...but it's looking more and more as though that won't quite be the case in not two, not three...but possibly up to seven states now, including a couple whose websites have been working smooth as silk??
On March 7th I pointed out that due to Massachusetts having some 154,000 people stuck in health insurance limbo, they've been granted some sort of temporary extension, twice...out to as far as June 30th in some cases...
However, I've had a chance to look at the actual VT exchange presentation, and it looks like I was partially correct. The actual numbers are as follows (bold-faced are corrected):
Vermont's method of enrolling people has always confused me.
There are 36,846 Vermonters who have enrolled in health coverage, 33,549 who were automatically transitioned to Medicaid and 30,000 to 40,000 in the small-group market who were enrolled directly by the insurance carriers participating in the exchange.
A second article, from the Burlington Free Press, confuses things because it says the 36.8K are households, representing 50.4K people:
a state official reported to lawmakers Tuesday that 36,846 households had signed up for 2014 plans....
Larson’s presentation Tuesday showed that 50,475 individuals applied for coverage using Vermont Health Connect between Oct. 1 and March 17. A significant number of these applicants, 20,312, found they qualified for Medicaid, which has expanded eligibility this year.
Earlier today, contributor Esther Ferington brought an old New York Times article from last October to my attention. The article is actually about off-exchange enrollments as an option to using the exchanges, but the opening line of the story includes an interesting snippet:
WITH so much attention being paid to the troubled debut of the Obama administration’s health insurance exchanges, another alternative has largely gone unnoticed: unless you live in Washington, D.C., or Vermont, you can also buy insurance outside the exchanges — by going directly to insurance brokers, agents or company Web sites.
UPDATE: On the down side, I was off by 4% this time around.
On the up side, I UNDERESTIMATED:
Actual Feb. enrollments: 942,833, for a total of 4,242,325 thru 3/01/14.
Sarah Kliff at Vox just announced that the February HHS report is expected to be released today at around 4:00pm. A few items in anticipation of that:
As I've noted several times, I'm projecting the report to total around 902,000 exchange-based private QHP enrollments for the month of February (technically 2/02 - 3/01)
If accurate, this would bring the cumulative total of exchange-based private QHP enrollments to 4.202 million (from 10/1/13 - 3/01/14)
From the data I have, the average daily enrollment rate in February was almost identical to that of January, which had about 1.146 million QHP enrollments. HOWEVER, the January report included five weeks of data (12/28 - 2/01), while the February report will only include four weeks (2/02 - 3/01). Therefore, even at the same daily average, it'll be about 20% lower no matter what.
Don't be surprised if Peter Lee of CoveredCA decides to steal some thunder by announcing that California has enrolled 1,000,000 QHPs all by itself either today or tomorrow. However, that would include the past 10 days, while the HHS number will only run thru 3/01.
If you want to get REALLY specific, call it 902,800 and 4,202,292.
I've been dead-on target 6 times in a row without hyping up my projections beforehand. This time I am hyping myself up beforehand, so I'll probably be way off...but as long as I've UNDERestimated the tally, I'll be perfectly fine with that...
The report will be released in about 5 minutes, but my kid gets home from school in about 10, so it'll be a good 20 minutes before I can really post anything. Feel free to follow Sarah Kliff of Vox in the meantime!
Vermont continues to have impressive enrollment numbers (relative to their population size) despite their ongoing technical problems, partly due to an aggressive SHOP/Small Business enrollment program. Private QHPs have somehow more than doubled from 13,514 paid / 3,392 unpaid as of 2/10 up to 28,486 paid / 4,805 unpaid as of February 25th.
Meanwhile, the SHOP enrollment numbers are also impressive, jumping from 29,200 at the beginning of the year up to 40,000 as of 2/25.
In addition, the article claims that the 28.4K figure only represents policies, not people, which suggests that the actual number of individuals could be as many as 51,200, but I'm already finding it difficult to believe that they've managed to go from 13.5K to 28.4K in just 2 weeks in the first place, so I'm holding off on that factor for now.
The latest figures from the Department of Vermont Health Access, presented to lawmakers Wednesday, show 33,291 individuals have selected a plan and 28,486 are fully enrolled...
Until now, aside from the official monthly HHS reports, Vermont's enrollment data has been frustrating--not that it hasn't been available, it's just been released in confusing dollops (Massachusetts falls into the same category). Today, however, the Vermont Health Connect exchange released a detailed PDF that does a great job of answering the key questions--along with one bit of data I haven't seen for any other state so far: The breakdown not only of total Private QHP enrollments, but how many of these started in January, February and (upcoming) March.
Page 6 has the key data: A total of 16,906 QHP enrollees as of 2/10, of whom 13,514 are paid up. Overall, this points to an 80% paid rate, which is very good--but the monthly breakout is even more interesting: January-start enrollees have a 92% paid rate (which you'd certainly hope for by now, considering that we're into mid-February) and February-start enrollees are at 79% paid. The March-start enrollees (14%) are the ones providing the main drag on the total...but this is hardly shocking since the start date for that coverage is still over 2 weeks away.
The Vermont numbers have been alternately impressive and confusing at the same time. The wording of a prior article from 12/12 made it sound like the 45,000 (at the time) people were split between private enrollments and Medicaid expansion, but also made reference to 29,200 people being enrolled "directly via their employer". At the time, I wasn't sure what to do with that number, so I ignored it. However, the more recent article again references the same 29,200 people; after comparing the 2 articles, it seems pretty clear to me that these would fall under the category of "direct" or "off-exchange" enrollees (although they also might fit under "small business exchange enrollments", which is a category I haven't even added yet). Add this to the 22,800 private exchange enrollments and you have 52K total.
OK, the cutesy title is kind of a misnomer; my two previous entries didn't use that title originally...but they should have, and do now.
GAH!! OK, earlier today I read two conflicting stories about the Vermont enrollment situation. 
Vermont continues to have impressive enrollment numbers (relative to their population size) despite their ongoing technical problems, partly due to an aggressive SHOP/Small Business enrollment program. Private QHPs have somehow more than doubled from 13,514 paid / 3,392 unpaid as of 2/10 up to 28,486 paid / 4,805 unpaid as of February 25th.
