Washington State: 139K PAID QHPs (likely 158K selected)

As I noted last week, Washington State is doing things a bit backwards from just about every other state...instead of reporting the total number of QHP selections and then, in a few cases, also reporting the number of enrollees who have actually paid their first premium, the WA HealthBenefit Exchange is only reporting enrollments after they've made their first payment.

On the one hand, I wish every state was reporting this number. On the other hand, unlike MA & VT (which report both numbers) or Rhode Island (which is reporting both, but only including the total selections after subtracting those who are past-due on their payments), WA isn't including the total selections at all. This makes things a bit tricky for me, since I'm trying to report both numbers.

As a result, what I'm doing for the moment is assuming the standard 88% payment rate, which means that today's announcement of 139,000 QHP enrollments should mean roughly 158,000 total selections:

Interest has spiked over the past several days with an additional 7,000 enrolled in Qualified Health Plans, for a total of 139,000 currently enrolled. Nearly 640,000 Washingtonians have signed up for a Qualified Health Plan or under Medicaid expansion through Washington Healthplanfinder.

With this news, Washington is still running behind their target (and way behind mine), but not nearly as badly as I had thought.

9,000 paid enrollments since 1/31 = about 10,000 total selections, or about 1,000/day. If there's no further surge at all, that would only mean about 5,000 more by Sunday night. If things ramp up as I'm expecting, however, they should kick into high gear about now, with up to 5,300/day, or 26K more by 2/15. That would bring Washington State up to about 184,000...which would still be short of their internal goal of 215,000.