Illinois: 323K Total Enrollments; est. 139K QHPs, 184K Medicaid

This number out of Illinois was as much of an eyebrow-raiser as the NC/LA incident a few nights ago. However, it looks like this is a combined total of QHPs and Medicaid, which were at 113,733 and 131,995 respectively as of 3/01. Combined, that's about 246,000, with a 46/54 split.

For now, I'm going to play it safe and assume that this has shifted towards the Medicaid side a bit since then by calling it a 43/57 split, or around 139K QHPs & 184K Medicaid enrollments.

If I'm fairly close on this split, this represents a modest 17% increase over February's rate, which actually drops the projection a bit...but if I'm underestimating the QHP number, then I'm also underestimating the projection impact (sigh)...

To date, 323,000 uninsured Illinois residents have enrolled in health insurance plans, according to Get Covered Illinois, administrator of the state's official marketplace. As the March 31 enrollment deadline approaches, officials with the agency believe they will meet the state's target of having 143,000 more enrolled.

What's far more eye-opening to me is the specific designation of all 323K being "uninsured". Given my diatribe about Avik Roy and the "previously uninsured" issue this morning, this is of particular interest, but I strongly suspect that this is a misstatement on the part of the newspaper. Somehow I don't think that every single enrollee in Illinois was previously uninsured before going through the exchanges, but it's kind of amusing timing-wise...

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