Maryland increases QHP enrollments by 89% over 2014:: 119K QHPs thru 2/15

Holy Smokes.

264,000 Marylanders enrolled through Maryland Health Connection for 2015
Qualified Health Plan enrollments top 119,000
Enrollments “in the pipeline” can be completed by Feb. 28

Overview:
264,245 Marylanders enrolled through Maryland Health Connection from Nov. 15, 2014 to Feb. 15, 2015. That includes 119,096 people enrolled in private Qualified Health Plans (QHP) and 145,149 enrolled in Medicaid.

Due to high demand during the final weekend of open enrollment, Maryland Health Benefit Exchange is allowing people who started an application at MarylandHealthConnection.gov or contacted the call center by Feb. 15 to complete the process by Feb. 28. Figures for open enrollment will be revised after Feb . 28 to account for those completed enrollments.

Wow. This broke not only the HHS Dept's official target for Maryland (88K) as well as my own original target (105K), but even my recently-upgraded target (115K).

...Last year during the first open enrollment (Oct. 1, 2013, to March 31, 2014), 63,002 Marylanders enrolled in QHPs and 232,075 in Medicaid. That number rose to 81,091 QHPs and 376,850 Medicaid as of Sept. 20, 2014 to include people who had applications that still needed to be completed or who qualified for special circumstances or life changes.

This is an important data point: Until now I've been comparing 2015 enrollment data against the April 15, 2014 total (well, technically April 19...HHS threw in an extra 4 days after the end of the extension period for whatever reason). However, in this press release, MD has correctly compared the 2015 official deadline number against the 2014 official deadline date (3/31/14).

By that benchmark, Maryland has increased their enrollment number by a whopping 89%.