Way back in October 2013, I launched the ACA Signups project as a light, nerdy hobby thing which was only supposed to last around six months, through the end of the first ACA Open Enrollment Period (March 31, 2014). Instead...well, let's just say that it's more than seven years later and I'm still doing this.
The reality is that The Graph itself doesn't serve a whole lot of useful function anymore. The enrollment patterns were erratic the first couple of years but have since settled into a pretty predictable...if not downright boring pattern for both the federal and state exchanges. The main reason I keep doing it each year is mostly out of tradition these days; after all, without The Graph, there wouldn't be an ACA Signups and I wouldn't have become a healthcare policy wonk in the first place.
Still, The Graph remains a fun way of visualizing ACA Open Enrollment trends. Again, the dotted lines show last year's enrollment patterns for HealthCare.Gov, the 13 state-based exchanges (SBE) and BHP enrollments in Minnesota & New York. This year the lines will shift slightly due to Pennsylvania and New Jersey splitting off onto their own state-based exchanges, but the final totals will likely be similar...or perhaps not!
Way back in October 2013, I launched the ACA Signups project as a light, nerdy hobby thing which was only supposed to last around six months, through the end of the first ACA Open Enrollment Period (March 31, 2014). Instead...well, let's just say that it's more than seven years later and I'm still doing this.
The reality is that The Graph itself doesn't serve a whole lot of useful function anymore. The enrollment patterns were erratic the first couple of years but have since settled into a pretty predictable...if not downright boring pattern for both the federal and state exchanges. The main reason I keep doing it each year is mostly out of tradition these days; after all, without The Graph, there wouldn't be an ACA Signups and I wouldn't have become a healthcare policy wonk in the first place.
Update 12/23: I've updated the text and graph to include the final numbers from Minnesota & Nevada.
This is by no means the final version of The Graph for 2020, of course; there's still no data at all from the District of Columbia, Idaho, Rhode Island or Vermont, and the deadline is still days, weeks or even a month away for nine states.
Having said that, with the Week 7 HC.gov Snapshot Report being released earlier this afternoon, this is a good time to pause and take a look at how the 2020 Open Enrollment Period is shaping up. Remember, even HC.gov's total will change slightly when the dust settles...they're still missing the final 3 hours of the extended Open Enrollment Period (I'm guessing perhaps 30,000 more?), plus an unknown number of "callbacks" to people who were unable to get through on 12/15 but left their contact information (perhaps another few thousand?).
