The Red and The Blue (Follow-up)

Last week I posted an exclusive piece over at healthinsurance.org called "Hating ‘Obama’ but loving the ‘Care’ which noted an ongoing irony: The very red/red-leaning states which tend to "hate" the ACA the most are actually the ones signing up for it in droves. At the time, by grouping the states into one category or the other (using judgment calls for some states...I put Michigan in the blue column but Wisconsin in the red, for instance), I noted that the red states had a dramatically higher number of enrollments, even when the total populations are nearly identical in each group.

Today I've updated this data with the most recent numbers, and the difference is even more striking.

Now, there are a few important caveats here:

• As I noted last night, the enrollment data for "blue" CO, CT, DC, KY & VT does not include the past 4-17 days, which means that the big final weekend surge isn't included for those states. On the other hand, Idaho hasn't been updated for a solid month (since 1/17), which should cancel some of that out anyway.

• As I also noted, Washington and Rhode Island are only reporting paid or unpaid but not yet due QHP selections, while every other state includes all QHP selections. However, that would only account for perhaps an extra 24,000 "blue" selections between them; not enough for a notable impact.

• None of the states--red or blue--include any data since 1/15; I'm expecting at least 400K QHPs to be selected between 2/16 - 2/28. That could shift things one way or the other.

• Obviously, your definition of a "red" or "blue" state may differ from mine. I've highlighted 4 "blue" states and 3 "red" states which may be questionable; feel free to shift these states around as you wish...this is for illustrative purposes only.

• Assuming you agree with my placement, note that the total population of each group is virtually identical...about 159.0 million blue, 159.9 million red.

• One other important caveat: This table includes the 200,000 people who are set to be kicked off their policies next week due to legal residency issues. We don't know how many of these will be cancelled from each state, though I'm assuming most would be in red states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona. Then again, I could be wrong.

OK, with all of those caveats aside, the results as of today are: 59.2% of enrollments are found in the red states vs. only 40.8% in the blue ones. The GOP states are now outpacing the Dem-leaning states by 45%.

Read the full healthinsurance.org piece for more.