OK, this particular experiment is specifically for HealthCare.Gov QHP enrollments only, not the national total including the state exchanges. I'm trying to see just how much of a correlation there is between the Massachusetts exchange (the only state providing daily enrollment updates) and HealthCare.Gov. Obviously there are a lot of differences between the two beyond scale, but so far they've tracked pretty closely on a number of criteria, so I want to see if that holds true on actual enrollments as well.
So, this is actually a twofold projection:
On Monday, I suspect the MA Health Connector will announce roughly 33,300 QHP selections as of the end of Friday, December 5th.
Then, on Wednesday, I'm going to assume that HHS will announce roughly 465,000 additional QHP selections in the 3rd week, for a total of around 1.23 million QHPs via HC.gov thorugh Friday, December 5th.
Should be interesting to see how far off I am on this...
The Daily Caller might be interested in the fact that while yes, the 2nd week numbers did drop substantially in both Massachusetts as well as HC.gov, as I expected, they've bounced right back up again in the third week (in MA, at least). In fact, if you look carefully you'll note that determinations are increasing a bit each day so far:
Anyway, using my 48.5% rule, I estimate that Massachusetts is up to roughly 28,200 QHP plan selections to date...or nearly 89% of their 2014 total. They seem to be averaging around 2,200 QHP selections per day.
That's right: It's conceivable that MA could hit their 2014 total (31,695 as of April 19th) by the end of business tomorrow. Assuming the "selected plans" percentage has gone higher than 48.5% this week, it's even conceivable that they'll hit it today.
Meanwhile, Medicaid enrollments are about to break the 50,000 mark as well.
Massachusetts continues to steam ahead: Assuming at least 48.5% of QHP determinations have already selected policies, they should be at roughly 26,000 QHPs through last night, plus another 45,687 added to Medicaid.
If so, MA has reached 82% of their 2014 total in 18 days, and is on their way to a bare minimum of 134K even without the double-surges around 12/23 and 2/15.
Again, I'm expecting as many as 300K Bay Staters before the dust settles in February.
Based on yesterday's Massachusetts update, I'm knocking my "% selected of total determinations" down from an even 50% to 48.5% on any given day. Even so, 48.5% of 48,902 QHP determinations still means roughly 23,700, up nearly 2K on Monday.
As MA's 2014 OE total was only 31,695, this means the state is alread up to 75% of their 2014 total in the first 17 days of the 2015 period.
Put another way, at their current rate, MA is on track to enroll a minimum of 130,000 people for 2015...and that would be even without a December 15 or February 15 surge.
Meanwhile, MassHealth (Medicaid) enrollment continues to steam ahead, now standing at 41,762 people.
When I last estimated QHP enrollments for Massachusetts, I assumed roughly 50% of QHP determinations had been selected and thus figured they were up to roughly 19,200 as of the 27th. Today they posted their 2nd official weekly report, and it looks like I overshot a bit (the actual number through the 28th was 18,646). The good news is that the weekly report also includes three more days (through last night). When you tack on the weekend, the grand total now sits at 21,740. Divide that into the 44,446 QHP determinations and the ratio has dropped slightly, to 48.9%.
Still an impressive showing through the holiday weekend. For the record, MA has reached about 68% of their 2014 open enrollment total in just 15 days, and is on pace to reach at least 135K by 2/15 (though I still estimate they'll reach more than double that).
Meanwhile, Medicaid additions are now up to 38,283 to date:
Massachusetts continues to kick butt this time around in general, but I particularly like that they're providing a daily breakout of their enrollment data. Check today's out, which includes both Wednesday and Thanksgiving Thursday:
This may seem a bit anticlimactic after this morning's Healthcare.Gov news, but it actually just serves to underscore how great the 2015 open enrollment period is doing so far:
Again, assuming roughly 50% of all QHP determinations are already resulting in plan selections the same day (which was consistent for at least the first 8 days), this means that total QHP selections should be roughly: 16,186 + 3,770 + 15,562 = 35,518 x 0.5 = 17,759. Lop off a couple hundred to err on the side of caution and Massachusetts should have roughly 17,500 or more QHPs selected already.
Once again: In 2014 they only hit 32K total in 6.5 months.
Meanwhile, ACA Medicaid can claim credit for nearly 31,000 more people being added to the tally.
Yesterday I posted the MA Health Connector's first weekly dashboard report, in which they confirmed that yes, almost precisely 50% of all QHP determinations are consistently resulting in actual QHP enrollments on that same day. This held true on opening weekend (52%...3,600 out of 6,972) and held firm at 50% even in the first 8 days (14,101 out of 28,175), so I'm now pretty confident that it will stay at least at 50% daily going forward (obviously it should increase as we approach 12/15, which is fine).
Having said that, I can now add two more days to the tally...11/23 & 11/24:
So, that's 14,101 confirmed through 11/22. Add to that 50% of the Monday & Tuesday numbers (4,330 total) and you get an additional 2,165, or 16,266 QHP enrollments total.
OK, it might be slightly lower than 50% even, but certainly above 16K.
This is awesome. Remember how last week I was assuming that roughly 50% of those determined eligible for QHP enrollments likely had already gone ahead and done so each day? At the end of the week I pulled back from this and went with a more cautious 1/3.
Well, it turns out I had it right in the first place: Massachusetts is about to announce 14,101 QHPs actually selected as of Saturday, out of 28,175 determinations (essentially 50% on the nose)!
In addition, they're already up to 23,792 MassHealth (Medicaid) enrollments, which is also excellent.
(link provided soon...it's not even on their website yet!)
For context, Massachusetts is enrolling people in private policies eleven times faster than they did last year...and that includes the December & late March surges.
Put another way, in just 8 days MA has already enrolled about 44% as many people as they did in 200 days last time around.
