California: 34,000 *NEW* QHP selections added as of 11/17

Covered California has a slightly annoying policy (they did this last year as well) of not publicizing how many current QHP enrollees have renewed their policies (or switched to a different exchange-based one) until well after the December deadline has passed.

Unfortunately, this means that today's enrollment report figure is very misleading, as it only includes new enrollees added:

As of Nov. 17, approximately 6,000 new enrollees had elected to purchase a family dental plan at the time of enrollment. In addition, more than 27,000 current members had chosen to purchase a family dental plan at the time of renewal.

Covered California also announced Wednesday that more than 34,000 new consumers had selected a health insurance plan through the exchange since open enrollment began.

For comparison, HealthCare.gov just reported that a whopping 66% of the 1.08 million QHP selections made as of 11/14 were renewals by existing enrollees. Assuming a similar 2:1 ratio in California, that suggests somewhere around 100,000 Californians have actually signed up for 2016 to date (66K renewals, 34K new). However, until they make it official, I can only count the 34,000 in today's press release.

Interestingly, CoveredCA chose to emphasize the dental plan enrollment figure (33,000) in today's press release, probably because this is the first year that standalone adult dental plans are being offered standard:

Covered California announced Wednesday that it is seeing very strong interest in the new optional dental coverage offered for adults through the health exchange. More than 33,000 people have enrolled in family dental coverage since Covered California members began renewing their health insurance plans on Oct. 12.

“While we have long known that California consumers want insurance coverage for dental care, we have been surprised by the extraordinarily high enrollment, both by those who have health coverage through Covered California and by those signing up for health coverage for the first time,” Covered California Executive Director Peter V. Lee said.