Washington State: Net attrition rate just 5.1% since April!

According to the last official HHS enrollment report from back in May, as of April 19, 2014, Washington State had enrolled 163,207 people in private policies via their ACA exchange. Of those, 8,310 people never actually had their coverage start due to non-payment (WA requires payment of the first month's premium as part of the enrollment process, so I'm not sure what happened in these cases, but presumably there was some sort of credit card account approval glitch, insufficient funds in debit card accounts and/or the like).

In any event, that means the actual paid tally as of 4/19 was 154,897, or 95%, which is pretty darned good.

Well, a couple of days ago the WA exchange issued a press release regarding the renewal process for 2015, and included 2 key data nuggets. First up:

Approximately 100,000 out of 147,000 customers who are currently enrolled may be eligible to automatically renew their overage. Customers are eligible for auto-renewal if their current plan will be available in 2015, they provided the Exchange with permission to check their eligibility for tax credits for the next year, and they still qualify for coverage based on their income level and household size, residency and citizenship status.

So, that's 147K out of 154.9K, or 94.9%. That means that for all the fear-mongering about people dropping off the exchanges after the first month or two, in Washington State the net attrition rate has only been 5.1% in 6 months...less than 1% per month.

Meanwhile, on the Medicaid side:

...Under Medicaid expansion, income eligibility guidelines increased to 138% of the federal poverty level effective Jan. 1, 2014, increasing state Medicaid rolls by an estimated 328,000 individuals.

As of July 31, the "strict expansion" tally for Medicaid in WA was 352,386. If I'm reading this correctly, it means that almost 24,000 people have moved off of Medicaid since July, or around 7% of the peak number. This is actually a good thing since a) it means less cost to the government and b) presumably their lot has improved enough for them to leave the program in favor of a better situation.