While it's great to see an official press release instead of just the number on the website, and it's also great to see that the new number is 32,000 higher than 5 days ago, it's rather irritating and strange that nowhere in the press release do they break out the QHP/Medicaid numbers.

ALBANY (March 10, 2014) – NY State of Health (NYSOH), the State’s official health plan marketplace, reported that as of 9 a.m. today, 908,595 New Yorkers have completed their applications and 590,639 have enrolled for coverage since the launch of the Marketplace on October 1, 2013. More than 70 percent of those who have enrolled to date were uninsured at the time of application. Over the last week alone, enrollment has increased by more than 55,000.

Fortunately, the New York Daily News is reporting that breakout as :

I discussed the "Paid/Unpaid" issue in the California update a few moments ago, but the topic needed a separate entry as well. According to the San Jose Mercury News, CA-exchange-based QHP enrollees who enrolled by January 31st are up to an 85% payment rate, from 80% as of 2/19:

The numbers of nonpayers varied only slightly among the largest insurers on the exchange: Kaiser Permanente reported that 13 percent of its enrollees didn't pay. Anthem Blue Cross of California, Blue Shield and Health Net said it was closer to 15 percent.

Federal officials say they've noticed the same trend nationwide.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, it's not enough to know how many haven't paid, it's also important to know when the unpaid policies actually start as well as why they haven't paid yet.

This article is both very helpful but also has 2 frustrating data points missing. The key numbers: While CA was averaging around 7,200 QHP enrollments per day in the first half of February, that rate is apparently up to 8,000/day now. This is excellent, but I don't know whether that 8K/day rate is only for the past week or if it includes the full 2nd half of February (I would guess that it's risen steadily since then.

On the other hand, CoveredCA also suffered from a 3-day outage, which could skew the daily average...they had 3 days of no enrollments, followed, presumably, by the 22K people who tried on those days possibly joining another 22K over the subsequent week or so. Either way, it's looking pretty good, though California will have to end up averaging around 20,000/day in March to do their part in hitting 7M total by 3/31, or 13,000/day to hit 6M.

The other big news here (the main point of the article) is that payment rate for enrollees through 1/31 has gone up from 80% as of 2/19 to 85% as of a couple of days ago:

Greetings, all...just a few little site enhancements that I've added going into the Home Stretch:

1. As you may have noticed, I've started adding simple State Icon graphics to the entries. The site is pretty bland...nothing but dry text...so I decided to spruce it up a bit. In keeping with my Dour, Strictly Business style, however, the icons are still gray :)
2. For a long time I've kept the commenting system on a very short leash, to avoid spammers and wingnuts from pissing all over the threads. As such, I've limited commenting to only those who contribute either a donation or new data points. I've decided to experiment by replacing the comment system (which hasn't really had that much activity so far) with the more open-ended Disqus system; people will still have to log in with an account, but at least it should be attached to something solid (Disqus, Facebook, Twitter or Google+). We'll see how it goes...if the comments go to hell, I'll reverse myself and go back to the previous version (existing comments are all still there, though they don't appear on the Disqus system).
3. I know this is really cheesy, but I couldn't help myself: I've added a QHP Enrollment Deadline Countdown Clock on the home page. I've also posted my official QHP Projections for February (902,000) and Cumulative through 3/01 (4,202,000). (OK, never mind...the countdown clock was messing up the layout on smartphones, and it was pretty cheesy-looking. Plus, as someone pointed out, there's at least 2 states (Oregon & Massachusetts) for whom 3/31 may not end up being the deadline anyway...

Whoops...looks like I may have misread the previous Cover Arizona report. It had stated the total added to Medicaid due to Prop 204 restoration + Expansion as being 134,674, but they didn't specify the starting date for that figure; this time they're more specific, giving the total as 91,115 since October, which is the relevant date. Correcting now...sorry about the mix-up.

As of March 1st, AHCCCS reported that there had been 85,309 Arizonans added to AHCCCS under the Prop 204 restoration category (adults between 0-100 FLP) and 5,806 added to the expansion category (100 -133 FPL) since October. In total, that adds up to more than 91,000 Arizonans who have been added to AHCCCS since October due to the restoration/expansion.

Contributor Steve Ciccarelli just pointed out a fun fact about California's ACA exchange using my February QHP Projection Table:

California was averaging 7,182 QHP enrollments per day in the first half of February; they hit 828,638 QHPs as of 2/15.

Assuming this average has held at around that rate since Feb. 15th, they should have added another 151,000 through today, bringing them to around 979,000.

That leaves them just 21,000 away from 1 Million even, which they should reach sometime on Tuesday.

I've had quite a few updates first announced via Twitter, but this is the first one I've received via Facebook: Kynect Kentucky just announced 275,000 total enrollments, an increase of 10,086 since 2/27. The announcement was apparently made on Thursday the 6th, so presumably they hit the 275K point by the end of the Wednesday the 5th. Assuming the same 20.4% QHP / 80.6% Medicaid ratio that they've had until now, that brings KY up to 56,000 Private QHPs and 219,000 new Medicaid enrollments.

kynect Enrollments Top 275,000!

Staff at the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange paused on Thursday to celebrate this enrollment milestone, and prepared for a different kind of "March Madness," as Kentuckians rush to find affordable health care coverage through kynect before the March 31 deadline, when the 2014 open enrollment period comes to a close.

UPDATE: Hold the phone! Kynect just replied to me personally on Facebook, clarifying both the even more-recent total through yesterday as well as the exact QHP / Medicaid numbers!!

Several new numbers out of Arkansas. QHPs were at 21,763 at the beginning of February; I'll assume "late February" means around the 26th(?), so that's 4,237 in around 25 days.

On the Medicaid side, Arkansas' unusual "private option" system (in place of the standard Medicaid expansion) is a bit confusing as usual; technically the 94,000 people referred to are enrolled in "private" QHPs, but their bill is being footed 100% by Medicaid money, which is the more important factor here. The other 11,500 referenced were placed in "Medicare" although I'm pretty sure that's a typo and that it's supposed to read "Medicaid" (as in, "normal" Medicaid). It doesn't really matter, though; either way, both of these groups end up on the Medicaid side of the aisle, bringing Arkansas' total up from 79,000 to 105,500 new, ACA-enabled Medicaid recipients.

Already, as of late February, Wilson said 26,000 people had enrolled in the Health Insurance Marketplace and "had been transmitted to the (health) insurance carriers."

Connecticut's exchange PR person gave a new combined QHP/Medicaid tally of 141,233. The story was posted on the 7th but was actually updated on the 6th, so I'm assuming the number was as of the 5th. The previous number was around 58K Private QHPs and 82,100 Medicaid; using the same 41/59 ratio should bring these to 58,469 / 82,764.

Kathleen Tallarita, government and public affairs outreach manager for Access Health CT, said 141,233 residents statewide have signed up for health insurance through Access Health CT, created as the state's response to the federal Affordable Care Act. That surpasses the agency's goal of 100,000 new sign-ups in the first year.

In an article over at BloombergView, Megan McArdle (formerly of Newsweek/The Daily Beast, The Atlantic and The Economist) invoked my name regarding the recent "27% Previously Uninsured" McKinsey study.

Two reasons have been offered for why McKinsey might be wrong. For starters, Charles Gaba asks why, if McKinsey is correct, these numbers are so different from the numbers in New York, which collects data on prior insurance status and has found that a majority of purchasers are the previously uninsured.