California: Renewal data or not, the next QHP surge is definitely upon us.

I've had a couple of days to shake off the funk I was in after CoveredCA director Peter Lee stated that they would not be releasing any 2014 renewal data until as late as February. I'm still pretty grumpy about that.

Still, today brings some cheerier news: The CoveredCA BoD had a meeting, including this slideshow which includes a bunch of data stuff. No, it doesn't have any renewal data...but take a look at page 4:

2015 OPEN ENROLLMENT

Through January 12: 228,766 New Individuals Selected a Qualified Health Plan for 2015

Big deal, right? It updates the new enrollment figure a bit, but that's about it. But wait a minute...what was the CA QHP total just 1 day earlier (through January 11th)?

217,146 NEW QHPs total

Yup. Assuming both of these numbers and thru-dates are accurate, that's 11,620 Californians who enrolled in just 1 day.

For comparison, from 12/16/14 - 1/11/15...that is, after the deadline for January 1st coverage right up through 1/11...CoveredCA only enrolled 72,968. That's 2,700 per day, which means Monday the 12th saw the enrollment rate jump to 4.3x what it had been averaging over the previous 4 weeks.

This actually isn't that amazing. They hit a faster rate than this back on 12/15, I'm sure, and way back in December 2013 they hit as high as 30K in a single day.

Anyway, I don't know what was happening Tuesday, yesterday or today, but even if it's held steady, that should mean over 46K in just these 4 days (probably over 50K, really).

To put this in other terms: In addition to CA and NY not releasing any renewal data, Hawaii hasn't done so yet either. In a single day, Covered California's number just increased more than all of Hawaii's potential QHP renewals combined (ie, around 10K or so). Sometimes I forget just how huge a state CA is...

In addition, there are another (separate) 311K Californians who have filled out applications & been determined eligible for QHP policies but who haven't selected a policy yet, which bodes very well for the final month of open enrollment.