HealthSherpa enrolls 1.34M thru 4th week of 2022 Open Enrollment; suggests 3.0M total via HC.gov?

DISCLAIMER: HealthSherpa is one of the Enhanced Direct Enrollment (EDE) ACA brokers which run banner ads on my site. EDEs are basically authorized private, 3rd-party versions of ACA exchange sites which have their back ends integrated directly into the federal exchange (HealthCare.Gov) (W3LL and Stride Health are the other EDEs which advertises here).

Having said that, I believe Sherpa is the largest ACA EDE out there, and they're pretty transparent about their enrollment metrics, so until CMS posts their official Weekly Snapshot Enrollment Report (which should happen later this week), Sherpa's updates are pretty good indicators of how things are going overall.

In the first three weeks of 2022 Open Enrollment, they reported having enrolled 1,063,745 people in Qualified Health Plans (QHPs across the 33 states hosted via HealthCare.Gov.

This compared to 2,434,623 QHP selections across all HealthCare.Gov platforms in the first 20 days of Open Enrollment, or 2.29x as many as Sherpa's portion of the total.

Today Sherpa released their 4th weekly update:

With the busiest weeks of Open Enrollment still ahead, HealthSherpa has already helped more than 1.3 million people enroll in quality, affordable ACA health insurance plans. The amount enrollees will pay for their coverage remains low thanks to the American Rescue Plan subsidy expansions: Alabama and Texas lead the pack among states with the lowest median net premiums, at $0/month and $8/month respectively.

Read on for more detailed insights into the 2022 Open Enrollment Period so far.

Key Enrollment Metrics, 11/1/2021 – 11/27/2021

• HealthSherpa policies: 914,621
• HealthSherpa lives: 1,339,045
• Top States: FL, TX, GA, NC, SC

• Percentage claiming a subsidy: 97%
• Median Gross Premium: $753.44
• Median Net Premium: $17.96
• Median Subsidy: $669.00
• Percent enrolled in $0 plans: 30.4%

• Receiving CSR: 66% overall

• Average Applicants Per Policy: 1.46
• Sex of primary applicant: 54% female, 46% male
• Median age: 49
• Primary applicant age distribution: 1% under 21 / 14% 21-29 / 17% 30-39 / 21% 40-49 / 27% 50-59 / 20% 60+

​​​​OK, that's another 275,300 in the 4th week for Sherpa...down around 27% from the 3rd week, which is normal given that the 4th week included Thanksgiving weekend, which always sees a significant dropoff.

I have no idea whether HC.gov as a whole will similarly see a 27% week over week "Turkey Drop," but if it does, that should mean roughly 591,000 more QHPs across all HC.gov platforms from 11/21 - 11/27, or just barely over 3.0 million cumulatively.

On the other hand, last year HC.gov overall had a 31% drop from Week 3 to Week 4, which would mean roughly 559,000 more enrolling last week. That would put the grand total for HC.gov at around 2.99 million...slightly under 3.0 million.

If it comes it at exactly 3.0 million on the nose, that would put 2022 OEP up roughly 9.3% y/y for HC.gov states once you adjust for the missing day and 3 states splitting off of the federal platform (KY, ME, NM).