Pennsylvania: @PennieOfficial adds ~39K SEP enrollees since 2/15; avg. net premium cut in HALF!

On top of yesterday's confirmation by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid that over 1.24 million Americans have enrolled in ACA coverage via HealthCare.Gov so far during the ongoing Special Enrollment Period, I've also just been informed that Pennsylvania (one of the 15 states operating their own ACA exchange) has enrolled nearly 39,000 people during their SEP since 2/15 as well:

• 38,946 new enrollees since 2/15 (thru 6/14)
• Current Enrollment: Approx 324,000
• Since 4/16:
  • Average net premium after financial assistance is almost half what it was, down to $85/month from $168/month
  • ~53% are paying less than $1/month
  • ~71% are paying less than $50/month
  • ~34k additional customers are now receiving the Unemployment Insurance benefit, making them eligible to receive the maximum amount of financial assistance available through Pennie.

Unlike most states, I don't have SEP enrollment data from 2019 or 2020 to compare against for Pennsylvania (they split off from HC.gov onto their own exhange just last fall), but assuming it was similar to other Medicaid expansion states, 39,000 is probably around 2.3x higher than the same period in 2019 and about twice as high as spring 2020.

The 324,000 currently enrolled figure is noteworthy when you consider that CMS confirmed Pennsylavnia as having 315,334 effectuated QHP enrollees as of February, compared to 337,722 QHP selections during the 2021 Open Enrollment Period (OEP).

This means that in Pennsylvania, 93.4% of those who selected plans during OEP actually went on to pay their first and/or second monthly premiums and have their coverage be effectuated (the national average was 94.1%). Another 38,946 people selected plans between 2/15 - 6/14; a similar percent of those paying their first couple of months would be around 36,400 people.

If so, that means roughly 288,000 of the OEP enrollees are still sticking it out, or around 85.3% of those who signed up by the end of the official enrollment period.

Put another way. thanks to the beefed-up SEP enrollment, current ACA exchange enrollment as of mid-June is 96% as high as the official OEP enrollment number was.

Assuming PA's experience is representative nationally, that means current ACA exchange enrollment across all 50 states + DC would be around 11.52 million people, or ~900K lower than I had it pegged at as of May.

Again, however, there's no way of knowing how representative Pennsylvania is...especially when you consider that NON-expansion states have increased their SEP enrollment 4x over 2019 vs. just a 2.3x increase in Medicaid expansion states such as PA.