California: QHPs at 1.21M as of 2am on 3/31

Without the final day's numbers, this update is both helpful and frustrating, because it's so close yet so far away. The QHP number is actually somewhat lower than I had thought a few days ago (not that I'm complaining; HC.gov more than took up the slack, and CA was going nuts on the final day anyway...which is why I'm so anxious to get the data from the 31st):

Consumer interest in Covered California has been strong, with 1,209,791 Californians signing up as of 2 a.m. March 31. From March 24 through 2 a.m. March 31, 155,988 individuals signed up for coverage. During the same week, 389,840 accounts were started — including 123,787 on Saturday and Sunday, as consumers hurried to meet the deadline.

“We’ve set records on accounts created five of the past six days,” Lee said.

Through mid-March, Medi-Cal has enrolled approximately 1.5 million new members. This includes individuals who applied through the Covered California Web portal and county human services agencies, as well as approximately 650,000 former Low Income Health Program (LIHP) members transitioned to Medi-Cal by the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and 134,000 individuals who applied through the state’s Express Lane program. The high demand for coverage has seen more than 1.136 million people who applied on the Covered California website be determined likely eligible for Medi-Cal coverage.

I'm a little confused by the Medicaid numbers. It says the 650K LIHP transfers and 134K Express Laners are part of the 1.5M total...but if you subtract those out, it leaves only 716,000, not 1.136M.

Odder still, the 1.136M number is identical to what it was in the previous update from March 13 (covering through March 9th)...which makes sense, I guess, since this PR refers to the Medicaid data as being through "mid-March". In the prior PR, they also list the 134K Express Laners, and of course the 650K LIHP number is identical.

In other words, I'm not even going to update the Medicaid spreadsheet based on this...the numbers are too large and too contradictory.

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