Accuracy of Past Projections

Private QHPs: Total thru the end of December 2013
ACA Signups, 12/25 2,100,000 98.24% accurate
Actual (HHS), 1/13 2,137,630
Medicaid/CHIP: Total thru the end of December 2013
ACA Signups, 1/21 6,320,000 99.68% accurate
Actual (CMS), 1/22 6,300,001
Private QHPs: Total thru the end of January 2014
ACA Signups, 2/07 3,300,000 99.98% accurate
Actual (HHS), 2/12 3,299,492
Private QHPs: Percent Paid (as of mid-February 2014)
ACA Signups, 2/13 (10 AM) 75-80%

basically the same

New York Times, 2/13 (5 PM) 75-80%
Private QHPs: Total thru Feb. 19, 2014
ACA Signups, 2/19 3,860,000 at least 95% accurate
Pres. Obama, 2/20 "close to 4M"
Private QHPs: Total thru Feb. 24, 2014
ACA Signups, 2/25 (3:48pm) 4,013,762 99.66% accurate
Actual (HHS), 2/25 (5:59pm) 4,000,000
Private QHPs: Total thru the end of February, 2014
ACASignups, 3/01 4,202,000 99.05% accurate
Actual (HHS), 3/13 4,242,325

California Hitting 1 Million Private QHP Enrollments:

On March 8th, 2014 I projected CA hitting 1M on March 11th or 12th. However, I didn't realize at the time how ugly CoveredCA's mid-February outage had been.

Once I realized this, I revised my projection to sometime over that weekend instead; sure enough, they crossed the 1M mark on Friday the 14th.

National Exchange QHP Enrollments hitting 5 Million:

I originally projected total exchange QHPs to hit 5M on March 18th.

Around 2:50pm on March 17tt, 2014 I realized that since CA has been averaging around 20% of the total QHPs all along, once they hit 1M, the national tally should hit around 5M at right around the same time, so I moved my 5M estimate up one day.

Sure enough, a few hours later the HHS Dept. made the 5M announcement.

Final March 31st Open Enrollment Period Projection:

I made my final 3/31/14 call of 7.08 million a day or two earlier, and tweeted my projection officially at 11:15pm that night.

The exact 3/31 number has never been released, to my knowledge, but it ended up being almost exactly 7.1 million, meaning that I was off by just 0.3%.

April 15th, 2014 Open Enrollment Extension Period Projection:

My final official Exchange QHP enrollment projection as of 4/15 was 7.78 million; I made the call at 1:51pm on the 15th.

Two days later, at 4:00pm on April 17th, President Obama announced that the number of enrollees had actually passed the 8 million milestone. 

Now, the official number announced in the last HHS report was actually 8,019,763...but that was as of April 19th, so we don't know the precise moment that 8M was reached, but I'd imagine it was sometime on or around April 16th.

The earliest that 8M could have been reached was sometime on the afternoon of the 15th. The latest it could have been reached would have been around midnight on the 16th.

This means that at worst I was off by 2.75%; at best I nailed it right on the mark.

2015 Open Enrollment Projections:

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