Hawaii: Hallelujah!! A full update at last: 16.1K QHPs, 2,400 SHOP, 50K Medicaid! (UPDATED)

Well this one was unexpected: It's not a formal press release, but this story from the Hawaii Reporter--which actually has a pretty negative slant to it--is chock full of actual, current enrollment data points for Hawaii...and they're pretty good, relatively speaking.

None of the numbers are precise--they're all rounded off...but it's still a breath of fresh air from the Aloha state, and brings the number of states which haven't provided renewal data down from 3 to two (of course, the other two are California and New York, but still...)

Anyway...

...The Connector had about 1,000 people enrolled at this time last year. As of Thursday, that number had grown to 16,000.

...More than 365 small businesses, with 2,400 enrollees, have joined the Connector through the Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP, in part because of tax deductions available to them, Kissel said.

Another 50,000 people have been added to the Medicaid rolls in Hawaii, Kissel said. Whether those new enrollees were part of the 100,000 to 150,000 uninsured in Hawaii when the Connector launched in October 2013, or they’ve left other plans to get insurance, the Connector isn’t sure.

The 16K QHP figure jibes with the 3,500 figure given back on 12/18, considering that renewals weren't included at that time. I'm not sure how the other 12.5K breakout, though it's likely around 10-11K renewals and another 1,500 - 2,500 new additions. Ultimately it doesn't really matter, I suppose; the numbers are too small to impact my projection chart much anyway, and an enrollee is an enrollee.

UPDATED 1/17/15: OK, here's another article which gives a more exact breakout, including an official 2/15 target:

The Hawaii Health Connector has enrolled 6,600 residents in health insurance plans in the past two months of open enrollment, compared to about 1,000 who signed during in a three-month period last year.

Hawaii residents who signed up by Thursday will have health insurance coverage beginning Feb. 1.

The state's online health insurance exchange, created by the federal Affordable Care Act, ended 2014 with 9,500 enrollees, bringing the total to date to 16,100.

"I'm very confident we'll go over 20,000 enrolled by Feb. 15," Hawaii Health Connector Executive Director Jeff Kisseltold PBN.

The 2,400 SHOP number is actually quite impressive given the state's small size and how anemic the SHOP enrollment numbers were both last year and this year. In fact, it's around 2.3x as many people as they had in the SHOP program last summer.

That 50K Medicaid figure, however, is cumulative--HI was at around 46.6K added to Medicaid last spring, and reported another 3,400 on 12/18, which brings the total to 50K already. Presumably some have dropped off while others have joined since then, and again, it's just a rough figure.

Anyway, this fills one of the smaller but more annoying holes in the data, so that's good.

In addition, Hawaii now has the distinction of being the first state to have broken not only the HHS Dept's 2015 open enrollment period target, but my 2015 target as well.

Granted, it wasn't a particularly high bar to clear...HI only enrolled 8,592 people as of last April, meaning they only had to hit 13K to achieve this, but still, good for them.