AlexcSinger just posted this diary, quoting the Wall Street Journal:
So far, private health plans have received enrollment data for 40,000 to 50,000 users of the federal marketplace, the people familiar with the figures said.
The figure of 40,000 to 50,000 doesn't include people in the 36 states who used the federal website to learn they qualify for Medicaid, a federal-state health program for low-income people. Medicaid is being expanded in many of the 36 states.
This seems like an appropriate place to
take another look at my own diary from last week below the fold:
As I noted in the diary:
It will be very interesting to see just how close--or completely dead wrong--my own figures are at ObamacareSignups.net
As of this morning, the Week 6 Tally stands at:
373,196 Exchange Applications/Enrollments and
588,948 Medicaid/SCHIP Expansion Enrollments.
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There are two other legitimate/serious ACA-tracking sources that I've found to be pretty reliable:
--EnrollMaven.com is an openly anti-Obamacare outfit. As such, they're using an extremely strict definition of what "counts": No Medicaid, no SCHIP, no Applications, and they aren't even including the Catastrophic plans (even though those are a 5th option on the paid-for exchanges). They're only counting people who are actually fully signed up/enrolled (and presumably paying) for Gold, Silver or Bronze plans through the exchanges (why they aren't including Platinum plans, I have no idea, though that number is likely to be tiny).
With all of the above caveats, their number as of this morning is only 43,359.
--The Advisory Board Company, on the other hand, doesn't include Medicaid but does claim to break out the Exchange numbers by both Applications and Enrollments.
They put the numbers at 195,000 enrollments out of 485,000 applications.
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So, it seems to me that the official enrollment numbers that Sebelius announces will be somewhere between 40,000 - 400,000 for the first month.
If it's towards the low end, that sucks...but remember that as long as those 400,000 applications are legitimate, complete and aren't accidentally deleted in a database glitch (or whatever), they will be processed soon.
Just keep this in mind and brace yourselves for the inevitable media/GOP outrage over the puny initial numbers.
Another key point: I assume Sebelius' numbers will ONLY be for Oct 1 - 31 and will likely NOT include anything from November.
Finally, remember that in Massachusetts, hardly anyone signed up the first few weeks, but there was a massive spike in enrollments very close to the deadline (in this case, 12/15 would be the key date, since that's the deadline for having coverage starting on 1/1/14).
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ObamacareSignups.net