Maryland: 126K effectuated QHPs, 367K Medicaid

Not sure how this one got by me, but the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange actually released some updated enrollment numbers over a week ago:

Nearly a half-million Marylanders — 493,346 — have enrolled in quality, affordable health coverage through Maryland Health Connection for 2015.

That includes 126,346 people enrolled in private Qualified Health Plans and 367,000 enrolled in Medicaid from Nov. 15, 2014 through July 5, 2015. About 92 percent of enrollees through the state’s health insurance marketplace are receiving some form of financial assistance.

Medicaid enrollments are year-round. And while open enrollment for private health insurance for 2015 coverage ended in February, people may still enroll if they have a qualified “life event.”

The "92% receiving financial assistance" bit is slightly misleading; that's true, but only because the Medicaid enrollees are lumped in. If you're talking about QHPs only, it's more like 69% (87.2K out of 126.3K). Whether that's a good or bad thing obviously depends on your POV.

Anyway, the previous tally I had for Maryland was 125,535 QHP effectuated (paid/active) enrollees as of 4/30/15 out of around 130,000 total QHPs selected.

I'm pretty sure that this number represents currently effectuated policies based on the identical wording to the last update (where I confirmed this to be the case). Assuming a 94% payment rate (Maryland has always hit the high end of this), that suggests around 134.4K total QHP selections, or about 4,400 since the end of April. That's roughly 66 per day, which is actually a bit lower than the 75/day I would've expected, but not bad at all.

Those numbers are pretty fuzzy. What isn't fuzzy, however, is that Maryland's currently effectuated number is 811 higher than it was at the end of April. While this is a pretty small number, it's significant because it adds to the evidence out of Washington State and Colorado that the national effectuated total, which I've been estimating to be around 10.3 million as of July, may actually be higher yet--perhaps 10.4 million or so.

Meanwhile, Maryland's Medicaid number is up to 367K via the exchange. Unfortunately, this doesn't tell us the net increase in Medicaid/CHIP enrollment as of July compared to the pre-expansion period due to churn (for instance, in April the net difference was only about 260K), so I'll leave it at that.