UPDATE: Rhode island: 33.9K QHPs, 94% of my OE3 projection

Now that we're past the official (and extended) deadlines for January coverage in most states, I no longer have to add the auto-renewal caveat for states which "pre-loaded" them such as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Having said that, Rhode Island, which already had one of the later deadlines in the first place, just bumped it out even later...all the way out through tonight (12/29).

Having such a small population, Rhode Island's latest update doesn't have much impact nationally, but it's still worth noting the weekly trend (remember, today's update still doesn't include the final 3 days of their extended deadline):

INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY ENROLLMENT As of December 26, 2015:

• 33,896 individuals are enrolled in 2016 coverage through HSRI, paid and unpaid.
• Nearly all of these individuals are current HSRI enrollees that have been autorenewed into a 2016 plan.
• 3,847 individuals have selected a plan for 2016 coverage, and are new to HSRI this year or returning after being enrolled with HSRI at some point during a prior year.

SHOP ENROLLMENT As of December 26, 2015:

• Small employer accounts created: 2,204
• Small employer applications completed: 779
• Small employer enrollment (paid): 535
• These employers represent 3,824 covered lives
• 83% of small employers are enrolled in the Full Choice Model.
• 90% SHOP renewal rate (2015 to date).

Aside from HealthCare.Gov itself, Rhode Island is the only state exchange to issue regular, weekly reports, making it easy to see the trend:

• Week 1: 30,374 renewals + 306 new = 30,680 total
• Week 2: 30,158 renewals + 585 new = 30,743 total
• Week 3: 30,092 renewals + 920 new = 31,012 total
• Week 4: 30,075 renewals + 1,163 new = 31,238 total
• Week 5: 29,908 renewals + 1,592 new = 31,500 total
• Week 6: 29,792 renewals + 2,189 new = 31,981 total
• Week 7: 29,768 renewals + 3,072 new = 32,840 total
• Week 8: 30,049 renewals + 3,847 new = 33,896 total

This is kind of interesting for two reasons. First, as you can see, the renewal number dropped each week for the first 7 weeks straight...because the exchange auto-renewed all currently effectuated enrollees up front, then left it up to those individuals to "opt-out" if they wished (think "Columbia CD Club" for the older folks among us).

This resulted in a net loss of 606 renewals through Week 7...or 2.0% of all current enrollees, which is still an excellent retention rate.

However, something even more interesting happend in Week 8: As far as I can tell, 281 of those 606 people actively jumped back in after all, selecting a different (I presume) plan during what they thought was the final chance to do so for January coverage (the 12/29 extension wasn't announced until the original deadline, 12/23).

As a result, assuming this number doesn't change substantially during the current (9th) week, that means Rhode Island will have retained a whopping 99% of their end-of-year 2015 enrollees, which is extremely impressive.

UPDATE 12/30/15: OK, HealthSourceRI has clarified the numbers; turns out it's not quite that high after all, although still very impressive:

@acasignups 99% renewal rate?? Not quite!! Enrollment a/o 10/31/15 was 32,851. Some could not be auto-renewed and are not counted in 30,374.

— HealthSource RI (@HealthSourceRI) December 30, 2015

OK, so 92.5% were actually auto-renewed originally, minus a few hundred who have since opted out, for an effective 91.5% retention/renewal rate for 2016 vs. the 10/31/15 effectuation number, which sounds more reasonable...although I'd really have to know the December effectuation rate for a true apples-to-apples comparison.

In addition, this means that there could be up to 2,800 additional 2015 enrollees who may still manually re-enroll (either for January over the past few days, or for February or March), so that percentage could still go up another few points.

Meanwhile, after averaging just 439 new enrollees per week for the first 7 weeks, RI managed to add an additional 775 last week. After subtracting the 325 who've dropped out to date, that makes a net gain of 3,522 new enrollees for 2016.

My personal target for Rhode Island during OE3 is 36,000, which means they've reached 94.2% so far, and will have to add a net of 2,104 more over the remaining 5 weeks to hit 100%. That's just 421 people per week, which should be doable.