Week 5 HC.gov Report: Prepare for the Turkey Drop!

I'm just putting this out there today because I know there's gonna be a bunch of eye-rolling stories completely misunderstanding the data later on this week.

Last Wednesday, the Week 4 HealthCare.Gov Snapshot Enrollment Report came out and showed a "mysterious" 41% increase in ACA exchange enrollments for the week vs. last year...jumping from 500,437 QHP selections to 703,556 QHP selections for the corresponding week this year.

This Wednesday, the Week 5 snapshot report will come out and will almost certainly show a "mysterious" large drop in ACA exchange enrollments vs. last year...from 772,250 down to perhaps 500,000 or so.

Around 7,000 or so of this drop will likely be due to Nevada splitting off onto their own ACA exchange. A small number will be due to Idaho expanding Medicaid. But the vast bulk of this seemingly disastrous ~35% drop will be for a far simpler reason...the same one which caused the seeming 41% spike last week: Thanksgiving.

Last year, Thanksgiving fell on November 22nd and was counted as part of Week 4. This year it fell on November 28th and will be counted as Week 5.

Since enrollments always plummet during Thanksgiving week, this showed up as a massive spike last year...which will be cancelled out by a massive drop this year.

Carry on.