Massachusetts shatters enrollment records for 5th straight year!

Massachusetts, home of the predecessor of Obamacare (Mitt Romney and other Republicans hate being reminded of this) doesn't reach their December deadline for January ACA coverage until Sunday, December 23rd.

As of today:

We have 262,459 enrollments for January 2019, compared to 238,631 as of a year ago.

For your CMS-definition math, we have an additional 18,345 plan selections, plus 21 effectuations for February and March, for a grand total of 280,825.

Holy smokes. Not only is the Bay State running a full 10% ahead of last year's paid effectuations as of the same point in time, when you include plan selections (which, for good or for bad, is the way that every other state's enrollments are officially counted during the Open Enrollment Period), they're already 5.1% ahead of last year's final tally.

This is especially astonishing given that Massachusetts' uninsured level is already the lowest in the nation at a mere 2.5%. Put another way, there's only 171,000 uninsured people in the entire state to begin with.

I'm still waiting for the final 12/15 deadline numbers to come in from CMS for HealthCare.Gov, of course, but at this moment, to my knowlege, Massachusetts is the only state which is surpassing last year's enrollment numbers...and they're doing so by double digits.

Even more eyebrow-raising: Here's MA's total enrollment for every year that the ACA exchanges have been in place:

• 2014: 31,695 (disasterous technical problems; scrapped for all-new platform)
• 2015: 140,540
• 2016: 213,883
• 2017: 266,664
• 2018: 267,260
• 2019: 280,825 and counting

Also worth noting: MA is also experiencing at least a 93% payment rate...that is, over 93% of January enrollees have already paid their first month's premium. This number will continue to rise over the next week or two, and will likely end up somewhere around 95% or so.

Remember the old "But How Many Have PAID???" arguments from 2014?