Maryland: Net attrition remains under 2% per month

In my most recent Maryland exchange update, I noted that after months of ACA exchange enrollments increasing during the off-season (if slowly), net policy cancellations finally started to outweight off-season additions starting in August:

As of Aug. 13th, 606,226 Marylanders have enrolled in quality, affordable health coverage for 2015 through Maryland’s state-based insurance marketplace.

That includes 123,673 people enrolled in private Qualified Health Plans (QHP) and 482,553 people enrolled in Medicaid through the marketplace since open enrollment for the year began on Nov. 15, 2014. Nearly 94 percent of all Marylanders who have enrolled through Maryland Health Connection for coverage this year received financial assistance.

Today, the exchange tweeted out a quickie update ahead of the 2016 Open Enrollment period:

More than 742,000 #Marylanders are already covered. A look at the numbers as we gear up for Open Enrollment: pic.twitter.com/pmnx0VgWkE

— MD Health Connection (@MarylandConnect) October 9, 2015

The key number is the 120,617 figure in the middle. I'm assuming that this number is as of, say, September 30th or so, which would mean that they've lost 3,056 enrollees since August 13th, or roughly 2.5% of the total over a 7 week period; let's call it perhaps 1.5% per month. This is actually a slower rate than what I've been seeing nationally either last year or this year.

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