Illinois: ACA Medicaid expansion up to 452K! (UPDATED x2)

Holy smokes! This may seem a bit anticlimactic after this morning's surprise announcement by CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, but it's still just as important in other ways:

@JeffYoung @philgalewitz I can tell you there are now roughly 450,000 newly eligibles who enrolled so far in Medicaid in Illinois.

— Peter Frost (@peterfrost) September 18, 2014

When I inquired, he explained:

@charles_gaba @JeffYoung @philgalewitz Sure. Those are the figures from @CoveredIllinois. They say total is now 670,000 (mktplc + Medicaid)

— Peter Frost (@peterfrost) September 18, 2014

When I asked for a link for confirmation, Jonathan Ingram helpfully chimed in:

@charles_gaba It's reported monthly. 451,880 as of August 31. http://t.co/XX8tJxaOoq cc: @JeffYoung @peterfrost @philgalewitz

— Jonathan Ingram (@ingramlaw) September 18, 2014

...And sure enough, 451,880 Illinois residents have indeed been enrolled in "Full Benefit ACA (including CountyCare) Medicaid Recipients with Eligibility"

Considering that my prior Illinois Medicaid tally was 350K as of June 13, this is a huge increase. But wait, there's more!

Note the 670K combined enrollment figure. If you subtract out the Medicaid number, that leaves 218,120 private QHP enrollees in Illinois as of early September.

Which just happens to be 628 higher than the 217,492 who were enrolled as of 4/19...which means that the number of additional QHPs added has pretty much matched the number of people who have dropped out.

Except that, of course, around 10% of the original 217K never paid their first month's premium, which means that Illinois has seen a net increase of around 11% QHP enrollments since mid-April.

Conversely, if the currently enrolled (and therefore paying) number is around 218K, and means that the gross total in Illinois should be around 250K as of the end of August (90% eventually pay but this percentage is lower in more recent weeks, of course).

UPDATE 09/18: Hmmm...ok, never mind...maybe; Peter Frost (source of the 670K number) now clarifies:

Just to be clear: The number IL officials are using (670K) is their rounded Medicaid + rounded mktplc, using 4/19 data...So that's 452K (Medicaid) + 217K and change (mktplc) = roughly 670K. State is still using old mktplc data from 4/19.

OK, this is just incredibly confusing now. If both the 452K & 217K figures are from April, that would mean that the 452K Medicaid tally hasn't budget at all since then, which makes absolutely no sense at all (there's no off-season for Medicaid, and every other expansion state has seen huge increases even since mid-April).

In addition, there's this official update from June, when the Medicaid tally (specifically expansion) was only 350K.

So...I'm not sure what to make of this. Will update if/when I straighten it out.

UPDATE 09/18: (sigh) OK, Frost has clarified the clarification: 

@charles_gaba we're crossing wires. 452k Medicaid as of 8/31. 217k and change as of 4/19, last state data Feds have released.

— Peter Frost (@peterfrost) September 18, 2014

OK, that makes more sense. So...never mind about the QHP/attrition stuff, but this is still a good 100K increase in Medicaid numbers for Illinois since June. Sheesh.