ONE MORE UPDATE: ACA Signups: Dust settling, new numbers from NV, WV and...South Dakota???

NOTE: This was originally posted over at Daily Kos. I've since ported it over here for archival purposes.

OK, after the insanity of the past few days in terms of both the ever-shifting January enrollment deadline (changing from 12/15 to 12/23 and then 12/24 Federally; ranging from 12/23 to 12/24 to 12/27 to, amazingly, 12/31 for some of the State exchanges) as well as on a personal level (Forbes, the Washington Post and NY Magazine are now citing ACASignups.net as a trusted source), actual updates to the enrollment tally have actually been kind of quiet the past day or so.

(oh, and also, thank you to dKos for the Front Page treatment this morning!)

The numbers were spiking so rapidly in the days leading up to Christmas Eve that it's a bit odd to see such a dearth of new data since then.

HOWEVER, there have been 3 updates since then which may seem pretty minor on the surface, but which speak volumes about what's actually happening nationally.

First up is Nevada. Previously, the most up-to-date private enrollment figure was 6,600 people as of 12/11. Yesterday, however, the state exchange tweeted that this number had jumped to 12,740 as of midnight on 12/23. Thanks to sulthernao for the find.

Yes, that's a 93% jump in 12 days, which is impressive, but that's not the number I want you to notice. The more important part is that this is the only state besides Washington which has also answered the question "How many have PAID?" This is important mainly because that's the new GOP talking point that's been making the rounds. The answer? 6,219.

So, in addition to Washington, where 48% of the 135,000 enrollees have already paid their first month's premium, we now know that 49% of Nevadan enrollees have as well.

These two states represent about 8% of the total enrollees to date nationwide, so it sounds like "around 48%" is a pretty good answer to an otherwise meaningless question. Extrapolated nationally, that comes to around 875,000 private plan enrollees of the 1.83 million total.

Next up is West Virginia, where dKos member duhban provided their newest number: Over 2,200 private enrollments as of 12/22, up from 1,237 on 12/12. That's a 78% jump in 10 days. The 1,237 figure itself was a 60% increase over the 11/30 number, FWIW.

Finally comes an even smaller, but more important number: South Dakota.

This one comes to us courtesy of dKos member puzzld, and is significant because 1) It's a deep red state which 2) didn't expand Medicaid and 3) is run through the Federal HC.gov exchange, so the number here should be rather telling.

According to the Argus Leader, South Dakota has gone from 372 people enrolled in private plans as of 11/30 to at least 2,501 by 12/23.

Now, obviously SD may not be representative of every state given the tiny numbers at play, but that's still a 6.7x increasein private enrollments.

Much of this is already accounted for in the 750,000 "unspecified" figure on the spreadsheet (which runs through 12/22), but it's still worth keeping in mind.

By the way, as noted above, more and more dKos members have been providing tips/links to updated enrollment numbers, which is excellent and most appreciated.

There are some folks who volunteered to help in the past but haven't provided any updates yet, either due to not being able to find them or to simply losing interest/not having the time, which I totally understand. Instead of listing everyone all the time, I've started giving full credit to the individuals who provide each update (or, in cases where more than one person provides the same update, to whichever one I happen to read first lol...) on a state-by-state basis. This seems more fair to me.

As always, ArcticStones deserves high praise, as he's provided something like 60% of the state updates to date; even if he never provides another one (and I hope he'll continue!), he's the one who really helped move this project into prime time.

UPDATE: Thanks to Witgren for a VERY interesting update from Iowa:

CoOportunity Chief Operating Officer Cliff Gold said the company had signed up 2,577 Iowa customers through healthcare.gov as of last Friday and a total of 8,583 in the state.

Across Iowa and Nebraska and including plans purchased through healthcare.gov and other means, Co­Oportunity enrollment topped 24,000 Monday — six times the enrollments as of late November, before the federal website was improved.

OK, there's a lot to unwrap here.

Iowa's 11/30 HHS total was only 757 private enrollments, so even if the total as of 12/20 was "only" 2,577, that's still a 3.4x increase in 20 days.

However, this is only for one of the 2 providers participating in the exchange in Iowa: CoOportunity Health and Coventry Health. Assuming that they're similar in size/enrollments/etc, that suggests that Iowa could be up to over 5,000 private enrollees. I can't use that number, though.

The "8,583" number is more confusing, and potentially more stunning, depending on what it's referring to. Subtract 2,577 and you have 6,006 other enrollees.

Now, some of those are just normal health insurance enrollees that they would receive regardless of the ACA, but the article makes it sound like that's a much larger number than normal.

This suggests that a large chunk of those 6K are people enrolling in ACA-compliant plans who otherwise wouldn't have done so, but NOT DOING SO THROUGH THE HC.GOV SITE.

If that number is anywhere close to the ones enrolling via the exchange, the actual number of "Private Enrollees" could potentially be TWICE what I have listed. Again, however, until I can clarify this, I'll have to stick with the 2,577 figure, which is fine.

Also, thanks to Denver11 for the latest Hawaii update. Still tiny numbers but every one helps.

MAJOR Update: OK, this isn't an update to the actual numbers, but I've made it easier for people to submit updates to various state numbers. Use this link: ACASignups.net/Submit_Update

Update x3: A bit of disappointing news...but also something interesting.

ArcticStones noted that CoveredCA has released their "Christmas Deadline" update, and the total is actually a bit lower than I had expected; 428,000 as of Monday night instead of the 449,000 that I had projected. So, I've had to knock the total down by 21,000. At least this allowed me to clean up the California portion of the spreadsheet, which was getting awfully messy...

On a separate note, check out the opening paragraph of this Boston Globe article:

WASHINGTON — With the first enrollment deadline now passed, Republicans who have made the repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care law their central aim are confronting a new reality: More than 2 million Americans are expected to be getting their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act come Jan. 1.

Yes, that's about what I predicted.

The question is...where did the Boston Globe come up with that number?

Aside from ArcticStones and myself, who else has gone on record with a 2M by 12/31 prediction? The only other source I know of is the guy at Forbes who wrote the article citing ACASignups.net as a cross-check to his own findings. Heh.

ONE MORE UPDATE: In my previous update, I mentioned that the California 12/23 deadline tally was "only" 428,000, about 21,000 lower than my previous 449,000 estimate.

However, I just found this article which states:

The latest tally from Covered California shows 428,000 people have signed up for coverage. The state is now going through tens of thousands of applications that were started before Monday's deadline but not completed.

CoveredCA had a major outage on Monday, but is counting the partially-completed enrollments from then towards 1/1/14 coverage.

"Tens of thousands" = a bare minimum of 20,000 enrollments.

Add 20K to 428K and you get...at least 448,000.

:)