Charles Gaba's blog

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE LIFT-OFF!!

Roughly 27,000 Americans signed up for insurance on the federal exchange on Tuesday, according to internal figures, bringing the site’s three-day enrollment total to 56,000. That figure is more than double the number who enrolled online in the entire month of October, which was almost 27,000.

Needless to say, I've been scrambling to bring the ACASignups.net spreadsheet up to speed this morning.

It seems that the "December Spike" or "Post-Thanksgiving Surge" or whatever you want to call it that Pres. Obama and the HHS Dept. were hoping for is happening, and in a big way. The announcement that the biggest hurdles in the ongoing Healthcare.Gov website debacle have been resolved is no doubt a major part of this dramatic turn of events.

In any event, I think I'll be hopping over the next few weeks.

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

The newly game HealthCare.gov signed up 29,000 people on Sunday and Monday, an official familiar with the program said, more than were enrolled through the federal Obamacare portal in all of October.

The enrollment surge follows a round-the-clock effort by federal tech officials and contractors to make more than 400 software fixes and hardware upgrades since the site’s disastrous launch.

Already added to the ACASignups.net spreadsheet; see updated graph below.

As you can see, at the current rate, they'll hit roughly 2.9 million by 3/31/14.

HOWEVER:

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

Now that we're past Thanksgivukkah and out of November, the monthly ACA enrollment numbers for the 2nd month of the Healthcare Exchanges are starting to come in. I don't have any official numbers for any specific states for the past week or so yet, but according to Bloomberg News, Healthcare.gov saw a quadrupling of enrollments over October last month:

About 100,000 people signed up for health insurance through the online federal exchange last month, a roughly four-fold increase from October even as a team of U.S. government and contractor programmers was fixing the troubled Affordable Care Act website, said a person familiar with program’s progress.

The preliminary November numbers reflect individuals who successfully selected a plan.

Now, there's some important points to keep in mind here:

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

Yes, that's right--thanks to new data out of West Virginia and clarified/confirmed data out of California, the ACASignups.netspreadsheet just saw the Medicaid/SCHIP expansion total nearly double, to nearly 1.4 million.

Specifically, this article in USA Today (provided by dKos member ybruti), which notes that WV authorities personally contacted 118,000 people deemed eligible for Medicaid expansion and have already enrolled over 54,000 of them.

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

've added a few new numbers to ACASignups.net, but the main changes are some new features:

--First, I'm "changing" the name from ObamacareSignups.net to ACASignups.net. Both will take you to the same spreadsheet, of course, but ACASignups.net is just shorter and easier to type. Use whichever one you feel is appropriate when reposting.

--Second, as I mentioned last week, by popular request, I've added graphical charts showing both the ACA Private Exchange enrollments as well as a comparison against the Massachusetts enrollment pattern of 2007.

--Third (and this is BRAND NEW), I've added the actual official HHS Dept. Per-State Goals for the 6-month enrollment period! This answers the question about where the mystical "7 million" figure came from, broken down by state (more about this below the fold).

--As far as I can tell, 2 of the other websites that were tracking ACA enrollments have abandoned the project: Advisory Board Company and Aaron Strauss. However, EnrollMaven.com is still keeping at it.

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

Meanwhile, since the official HHS report last week, I've made some major changes to the ObamacareSignups.netspreadsheet:

Going forward, whenever possible I'm going to only be listing actual enrollments for each state. In this sense, my numbers will more closely parallel EnrollMaven.com, an openly anti-ACA website that's also been tracking Obamacare signups. I was highly skeptical of EnrollMaven at first, but their methodology seems to be sound. In addition, they've at least been completely frank about their negative opinion of the ACA, and many of my sources have turned out to be identical to theirs, so I've grown pretty comfortable with using them as a cross-check on my own numbers.

However, there's still a few important differences between their site and ObamacareSignups.net:

--I'm continuing to include Medicaid and SCHIP enrollments, which they don't track; this is still a crucially important factor, both for the success of the ACA as well as from a purely humanitarian POV

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

Meanwhile, since the official HHS report last week, I've made some major changes to the ObamacareSignups.netspreadsheet:

Going forward, whenever possible I'm going to only be listing actual enrollments for each state. In this sense, my numbers will more closely parallel EnrollMaven.com, an openly anti-ACA website that's also been tracking Obamacare signups. I was highly skeptical of EnrollMaven at first, but their methodology seems to be sound. In addition, they've at least been completely frank about their negative opinion of the ACA, and many of my sources have turned out to be identical to theirs, so I've grown pretty comfortable with using them as a cross-check on my own numbers.

However, there's still a few important differences between their site and ObamacareSignups.net:

--I'm continuing to include Medicaid and SCHIP enrollments, which they don't track; this is still a crucially important factor, both for the success of the ACA as well as from a purely humanitarian POV

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

Hey, GOP: EAT ME!!

Yeah, that's right: I wandered through the Healthcare.Gov desert for 40 days (well, 48 to be precise) and came out the other side with a small, but not insignificant subsidy for my family and I. $62/month or $744/year. Not huge, but that's enough to cover, say, our cable bill, anyway.

More importantly, this is based on our projected income next year. If we end up falling short, our actual subsidy could be significantly higher (or lower, if we do better than expected, although that would be a good problem to have, of course).

I haven't actually enrolled in a plan yet, although I did a bit of window shopping just to make sure that the site would actually let me do so. My wife and I will do so together later this week, under calmer, more organized circumstances. We do have 22 Silver or Gold plans to choose from, and while our actual premiums look to be fairly close to what we're paying now, the coverage should be better.

Meanwhile, since the official HHS report last week, I've made some major changes to the ObamacareSignups.netspreadsheet:

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

As many of you know, I've been tracking ACA applications (including Medicaid enrollments) since the beginning of October, helped by a dozen or so fellow Kossacks.

I've posted frequent updates here.

The reason I was including both applications as well as actual enrollments is because most of the reports didn't bother to distinguish between the two. Plus, the actual number of completed applications do serve a legitimate purpose as well (for instance, we know that as of 11/02 there were an additional 900,000 applications in the hopper, ready for plan selection).

However, with the release of the official enrollment numbers for the first 33 days (10/1 - 11/2), it seems a bit pointless to continue with the applications as well. Therefore, I'm making a major change to the spreadsheet.

From the Daily Kos Archive

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

Three hours ago, I posted this diary about today's official ACA signup numbers being announced.

As everyone knows by now, the official enrollment figure--as of November 2nd--was about 106,000 (plus another 392,000 added to Medicaid).

Well, there's something important to remember--things have started to ramp up since the crappy first month. The HC.gov site may still be having problems, but most of the state exchanges have worked theirs out, and California is starting to get things in gear:

California reports 59,000 health insurance enrollees through Tuesday

More than 59,000 Californians have signed up for coverage since the state launched its health insurance marketplace last month, but the figures showed a significant uptick in activity in the first two weeks of November, officials said Wednesday.

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