From April Ryan, whose "HHS major scoop" batting average is now two out of three (at least since I started following her, anyway):
At 12:01 AM, White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park acknowledged to QSSI, the Columbia, Maryland firm tasked with fixing Healthcare.gov that the ACA enrollments have surpassed the 7 million mark.
OK, that's pretty cool, but what's with the "holy smokes"? Well, when you listen to the audio clip of the countdown/7M announcement (and do so at the link...it's pretty cool), Todd Park states the following (emphasis mine):
"Outstanding Numbers" has two meanings: The first, of course, is that in spite of everything--the terrible website launch of HC.gov and some of the state sites; the still-terrible status of some of the state sites even now; the actively-hostile opposition and obstructive actions in certain states, the negative spin on every development by some in the news media--in spite of all of this, over 7 million people nationwide enrolled in private, ACA-compliant healthcare plans between 12:01am on 10/1/13 and 11:59pm on 3/31/14...slightly surpassing the original CBO projection for that period.
There's the usual discussions about "But how many have PAID???", "But how many were ALREADY INSURED???", "How many were YOUNG???" and "What METAL LEVEL did they get???" etc etc etc. All of these are reasonable questions for actuaries, accountants and so forth to ask, and the answers will indeed help shape our understanding of what the overall economic and health impact of the law will be.
For the moment, however, none of that matters. This is an outstanding number any way you slice it.
= appx. 22.1 Million People (at the high end) or 14.6 Million (at the low end)
Of course, you can quibble about how many of the 9 million off-exchange QHPs were previously uninsured, or how many of the cancelled plans were swapped out with QHPs from the exchanges vs the off-exchange amount. You can quibble about whether the "sub26ers" should be 3.1 million or only 2.5 million. You can argue bout whether "woodworkers" should "count" or not (as if a massive outreach campaign which encourages previously-eligible people to enroll in a program they qualify for isn't an accomplishment to be proud of). You can argue about whether unpaid QHPs should be counted (yet) or not.
The bottom line is this: No matter how you slice it, this is a ton of people receiving decent healthcare coverage who either a) didn't have anything before or b) can no longer be dropped, denied or bankrupted by coverage that was scattershot, piecemeal or shoddy.
More great news: Specific numbers out of New York, and apparently the 826K figure included about 6K more QHPs than I thought (and 6K fewere on Medicaid, of course):
Since the state website launched on Oct. 1, 826,812 people had signed up for coverage as of 9 a.m. Monday, with 436,304 qualifying for Medicaid and 390,508 obtaining private insurance, she said.
In addition, while I thought the extra 14K total was between 9am and this evening, according to this article 826K was actually the 9am figure, meaning an even higher eventual total. Doesn't really matter at this point, I suppose; the final numbers will all come out soon...
Beating expectations, President Barack Obama's health care overhaul was on track to sign up more than 7 million Americans for health insurance on deadline day Monday, government officials told The Associated Press.
...Two government officials confirmed the milestone, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter ahead of an official announcement.
OK, I've updated the "official projection" to 7,080,180 just for the hell of it, but I'm not trying to pretend that I had this thing nailed to the decimal point; my last real projection was between 6.9M - 7.0M, so I'm willing to divide 7,000,000 into whatever the final number is to find out how far off I am.
Believe me, I'd be perfectly happy if the final number as of 11:59pm ends up being 7.1M, 7.2M or even higher.
Short and sweet...Alabama was at 55,034 as of 3/01, so this appears to be a spike of nearly 22,000 QHPs. It's technically feasible that the 77K figure includes the 18K Medicaid enrollees which Alabama (a non-expansion state) has added, but I doubt it; that would only leave 4K QHPs in March, and they had over 11K in February, so I think I'm safe here:
So far 77,000 Alabamians have signed up for health insurance through the marketplace.
1,256 new QHPs may not sound like much, but for Hawaii this is huge:
On Monday, about 7,000 people were enrolled in health insurance plans, up from about 5,700 a week ago, said Eric Alberg, deputy executive director of the Hawaii Health Connector.
A solid number, a fairly solid date (assuming 3/16) and a confimation that it's private QHPs only, since they include the 3/01 number:
Jarvis Dortch, program manager and staff attorney for Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, said federal figures show roughly 32,000 Mississippi residents had enrolled in health exchange coverage through mid-March. That's up from the 25,554 who had enrolled by the end of February, but still thousands short of the original projection that 46,000 would enroll in the first five months.
