Maryland: Holy smokes. Nearly 15,000 QHPs in the first 10 days!

I know I've been saying that the worst-performing state exchanges from last year seem to be overperforming this year, but this is still a jaw-dropper. Maryland has done a complete turnaround this year:

As of Nov. 24, 2014, more than 25,000 Marylanders have enrolled in quality and affordable health coverage since the open enrollment period began on Nov. 15.

With the successful launch of the upgraded MarylandHealthConnection.gov website, 25,780 individuals have enrolled, including 14,749 enrolled in qualified health plans and 11,031 in Medicaid. From Nov. 15 to Nov. 24, 32,744 consumer accounts were created; 29,546 calls were made to the Consumer Support Center, and 79,681 visited the application portal on the website. 

For comparison: Last year, Maryland enrolled a total of 67,757 people in 6 1/2 months. They've now achieved 22% of that total in just 10 days.

On the surface, this isn't as astonishing as Massachusetts, which is up to 50% of their 2014 tally already, but I've been expecting the MA numbers since mid-October; I knew that they had upwards of 250,000 people in a sort of "holding pen" waiting for QHP enrollments, so the numbers would be there if they managed to get their new website working properly.

Maryland is a different story. I figured that a working site would improve their enrollment numbers, sure...but wasn't expecting it to be this dramatic.

In both cases, it's important to stress that this does not necessarily mean that their final tally in February will be quite as dramatic--this could simply be a lot of "front loading", like people who vote absentee a week before the election instead of showing up at the polling place on election day. For all I know, both states could come to a screeching halt the moment they hit their 2014 totals.

Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen, however.

Oh, yeah: And they've also added another 11,031 to Medicaid in MD.