Way back in October 2013, when the first ACA Open Enrollment Period (OEP) launched, there were infamously massive technical problems with the federal exchange (HealthCare.Gov) as well as some of the state-based exchanges (such as those in Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii).
Over the next few years, some of those exchange websites were replaced with brand-new ones (MA & MD). Some of the states scrapped theirs altogether and moved onto the mothership at HC.gov (OR, HI & NV, although Nevada has since split back off onto their own exchange again, and seems to have gotten it right this time).
UPDATE 2/24/20:California and New York have come out with their final, official enrollment numbers, as have Vermont,Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, although the latter three are estimates on my part due to the way they're reporting their enrollment data:
California and New York have both released updated 2020 Open Enrollment numbers, so I figured I'd update my spreadsheet one more time before the final data is released. This time I've included a smaller secondary table at the bottom which adjusts the Federal and State-based exchange numbers for Nevada.
OFFICIALLY, HealthCare.Gov enrollment is down nearly 128,000 people this year, but that's not fair because Nevada broke off of HC.gov onto their own full state-based exchange platform this year. When you adjust for that, HC.gov is only down 119,000 people for the remaining 38 states. Meanwhile, the state-based exchanges are officially down 2,900 at the moment, but again, with Nevada joining them, they're actually down around 8,900.people.
That leaves the missing enrollment data from five states. Rhode Island and Vermont haven't released any data...I'm assuming they'll both be very close to last year (call it at least 33,000 and 24,000 respectively). I'm assuming New York + DC will be good for perhaps 3,000 more enrollees combined in their final days. And California will likely tack on another 30,000 or so in their final 2 days of Open Enrollment.
Incomplete numbers have been released for California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts and New York, all of which still have ongoing Open Enrollment, and I'm still waiting on any enrollment data for Rhode Island or Vermont.
With all that in mind, here's a state-by-state breakout showing where things stand as of today, Jaunary 9th. The states have been sorted from worst-performing to best, although obviously the 8 states with partial or no data are misleading (vice-versa for the bar graph).
As I've noted several times recently, the "break off of HealthCare.Gov & establish your own state-based ACA exchange" train continues to pick up steam, with the following states having committed to either firing up their own, separate exchange website platform or at the very least going halfway by establishing their own exchange entity (which includes a board of directors, their own marketing/outreach budget, the ability to dictate which plans are allowed onto the exchange and so forth) if they haven't already done so.
I noted yesterday that Virginia is the latest state to consider jumping onboard the State-Based Exchange train, joining Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine and possibly Oregon in making the move. Every time I've mentioned Oregon, however, I've had to put a bit of an asterisk on it because I wasn't quite sure whether or not their shift back to their own full tech platform was still a go or not.
Like Nevada, Oregon did have their own full exchange once upon a time. Back in the first ACA Open Enrollment Period from 2013-2014, both states were among those which ran their own exchange websites. Nevada's was developed by Xerox; Oregon's was developed by Oracle.
UPDATE 1/22/18: Covered California has just issued a major update to their enrollment data, adding another 122,000 QHP selections to the national tally. Everything below has been updated to include this.
UPDATE 1/28/18: The deadline for Massachusetts has passed and they've posted their final numbers. Everything below has been updated to reflect this update.
OK. The Big News that everyone's waiting on this week regarding the 2018 Open Enrollment Period will come on Wednesday. That's when CMS will presumably post the Week 7 Snapshot Report for HealthCare.Gov, which covers 39 states. Wednesdays are also usually when Covered California, the largest state-based exchange, posts their updates as well.
That leaves the other 11 smaller state-based marketplaces (SBMs), of which only one, Colorado, has posted an update so far this week. As it happens, however, that was an impressive update: Colorado's total enrollments to date now stand at 149,000 people, about 7% ahead of last year. With CO added to the mix, I've now confirmed exactly 2,522,078 QHP selections across those 12 SBMs...which means the SBMs have already broken my personal final QHP projection of 2.5 million as of January 31st.
(note: I'm live updating as I type this stuff, so keep checking back, I'll be adding more updates/analysis over the next hour)
Wow! OK, I'm back from my kid's field trip (nature center; they learned about how animals handle the winter via hibernation, migration & adaptation...learned about fossils...went on the nature trail to look for animal tracks...and even dissected owl pellets, hooray!!). Of all the days to miss a major HHS/CMS conference call, this was a big one. I'm furiously poring over the HHS Dept's ASPE January Enrollment Report which, as I expected this morning, was just released less than two hours ago.
