Holy crap, what a day. I know things will be even crazier on 2/15, and nothing will compare to the insanity of last March 31st, but this was definitely in the top 10.
OK, so most people already know the big news (see the headline), but there was a bunch of related stuff today as well. So, without further ado...
—UPDATED: THERE you go: U.S. Surgeon General is everywhere this morning
--UPDATED: HC.gov should be about 7.45M thru 1/30...and my State Level Projection Adjustments
(only including this again as a precursor to the big news from later today)
--Rhode Island: 27.5K QHPs, 97% paid (sort of)
(yes, RI's number has gone down for 2 weeks in a row; there's a reason)
--New York: BREAKING: 513K QHPs, 1.49M Medicaid (UPDATED)
(this actually came out after the HC.gov update, but that's the bigger story so it's later...also, a mini-mystery played out on the NY numbers)
--Connecticut: 96K QHPs; will easily hit their target, very likely to hit mine
--Massachusetts: Chalk up another 700 QHPs (Medicaid up to 223K)
And now, on to the good stuff:
—Weekly HC.gov Report: 7.47 Million (undershot by 0.3% this week)
(They've also added another cool new feature: Municipal area breakouts!)
--BOOM. With today's HC.gov & NY State of Health updates, total QHPs have OFFICIALLY broken 10M nationally
--More fun with bar charts: Which states are likely to hit their targets or not?
Putting on my best Nate Silver hat, at this point, I think it's safe to say that:
—11 million is in the bag (99% chance...nothing is ever absolute)
—12 million (my original projection) is very likely (90% chance?)
—12.5 million (my projection since 12/12/14, which I'm still sticking with for the moment) is pretty likely (75% chance?)
—13 million is possible (20% chance?)
—13.5 million is conceivable (5% chance?)
It's even conceivable that it'll hit 14 million, although I suspect neither the servers nor the phone/help lines (beefed up as they may all be) would be able to handle that. If it came to that, my guess is that HHS would cave after all and do what they did last year by adding a "as long as you started by midnight 2/15..." overtime/extension period, which would likely run from 2/16 - 2/28.
Remember, theoretically there's up to 28 million people nationwide who are eligible to purchase a QHP via the exchanges, although even the CBO has never expected enrollments to reach that many; they top out at around 25 million by around 2017 or so.
Also remember that even if the total selections breaks 13 million, that does not mean that we've "reached" the CBO's "13 million", since that refers to the average monthly enrollment for the full calendar year.
Assuming 2/15 selections end up at my 12.5M mark, that should mean around 10.3 million average for the full year...which is still a vast improvement over the5.5 million average from 2014.
Oh, and one more thing: Donations are always appreciated, of course.