California: 140K *NEW* enrollees thru 12/13 (renewals not included)

This Just in...another partial enrollment report from Covered California: 

COVERED CALIFORNIA ENROLLMENT EXCEEDS 140,000 AS CRITICAL DEADLINE FOR COVERAGE APPROACHES

Consumers Must Enroll by Midnight on Dec. 15 to Be Covered on Jan. 1

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With just one day remaining to enroll for health insurance starting in January, Covered California announced that more than 140,000 consumers had enrolled in coverage by the end of Sunday, Dec. 13.

“Once again, Covered California is seeing an incredible surge of interest, and thousands of people are enrolling at storefronts, insurance agent offices and community centers across the state every day,” Covered California Executive Director Peter V. Lee said. “Everyone who needs health insurance, or knows someone who does, should know they can get financial help to pay for top-brand health insurance coverage, and if they enroll by Dec. 15, their coverage can start on Jan. 1.”

Although open enrollment runs through Jan. 31, 2016, consumers must enroll by midnight Dec. 15 to have their coverage start by New Year’s Day.

Covered California estimates that there are currently about 750,000 uninsured Californians eligible for subsidies, and it forecasts that between 295,000 and 450,000 consumers will newly enroll in coverage during open enrollment. An additional 1.4 million people statewide are believed to qualify for low-cost or no-cost Medi-Cal.

“We know that financial assistance is key in helping consumers get the health care coverage they need and deserve,” Lee said. “Our research shows that one-third of those eligible to get financial help to buy insurance don’t know it’s available, and we want to make sure our message reaches into every corner of the state.”

Enrollment locations can be found by visiting www.CoveredCA.com/get-help/local and searching for enrollment help by ZIP code. In addition, hundreds of locations with Covered California signage mark places where consumers can enroll confidentially and at no cost in a variety of languages. Consumers can also call Covered California directly at (800) 300-1506 to enroll over the phone.

As always, it's important to keep in mind that unlike most other ACA exchanges, CoveredCA does not include renewals/re-enrollments with these updates. I have no idea why they don't, but they just don't; they likely won't tack on the renewal number (which I expect to be anywhere between 1 - 1.3 million people!) until after January.

Anyway, in terms of new additions only, that's:

• 34K in 17 days (2,000/day)
• 49K in 20 days (2,450/day)
• 57K in 6 days (9,500/day)

Yup, Covered California was enrolling people nearly 5x faster over the 6th week than they were the first 2 weeks, which sounds about right to me. And again, bear in mind that this is new enrollees only.