A quiet day after the past crazy week. Only 2 posts, both of which are short enough that I'll just repost 'em right here:
And then there was...Idaho (& Connecticut, sort of):
Over the past 2 days, enrollment data updates were released through at least the official February 15th deadline by DC, Vermont, Colorado, Massachusetts and Kentucky (Massachusetts and Rhode Island's new full deadline is now 2/23). In addition, Connecticut released a partial update which ran through Friday the 13th (not including the final surge weekend).
That means that aside from the 2 days in Connecticut, there's only 1 state which is missing significant enrollment data prior to the 2/15 deadline: Idaho. Idaho hasn't issued an a full enrollment update report since January 13th, and their QHP tally hasn't been updated since the 2nd monthly ASPE report on January 27th, which brought their data up through January 17th (90,567 QHP selections).
In other words, they're missing more than a month's worth of data...including the final surge. My guess is that when they do come out with an update, it will end up being somewhere between 110K - 120K (an increase of 20-40K over their current tally), but they haven't indicated when they'll actually come out with updated numbers:
@charles_gaba As soon as we do, it will be posted here. I don't have an ETA.
— Your Health Idaho (@YourHealthIdaho) February 21, 2015
Idaho, as you'll recall, is unique in that it's the only state which moved off of Healthcare.Gov to their own full platform this year. It's also unusual in that this year it's the only state with their own exchange completely controlled by Republicans (Nevada has a Republican governor and had their own exchange last year, but at the time the state legislature was under Democratic control...and they had to scrap their exchange and move to HC.gov after severe technical issues anyway...and Kentucky's exchange was primarily set up by their Democratic governor).
To the best of my knowledge, the "Your Health Idaho" exchange ran pretty much smooth-as-silk from the start, avoiding the technical glitch drama that plagued many of the exchanges last year.
As for Connecticut, they broke 103K as of 2/13. I'm assuming they probably tacked on another 4,000 - 8,000 over the final weekend. AccessHealth CT said that they'll be releasing official numbers including the 2/15 weekend on Monday, I believe.
If I'm right about both of these, the final tally for the official enrollment period (11/15/14 - 2/15/15) should end up being roughly 11,665,000...minus the 200,000 "legal residency" cancellations noted a few days ago.
Thursday's Morning Joe, Sunday's NY Times
I know I've been #humblebragging re. media attention lately. Part of that was to explain the server slowdown a few days ago; part of it is that I'm terribly insecure, and with the open enrollment period wrapping up, I suppose I'm starting to get a bit anxious about my relevance again, bla bla bla. My apologies for that.
Of course, with the recent #ACAOvertime extensions, followed up almost immediately by the #ACATaxTime enrollment periods, it sounds like my lease on relevance has been extended (again) by another couple of months (Vermont is extending their tax period all the way out until the end of May, for heaven's sake!). Plus, of course, the King v. Burwell SCOTUS case will be smack in between the two, and the decision on that isn't expected until June, so I guess there'll be plenty of material for this site for a few more months yet...
Having said that, there are a couple of items to note:
1. On the one hand, not exactly a big fan of Joe Scarborough. On the other hand, always glad to see my work used to debunk inaccurate GOP talking points :)
2. Sunday's edition of the New York Times (link at the very bottom)