A couple of hours ago, ericlewis0 posted a diary entitled "100K Sign Up in a Single Day", and specifically asked for me to chime in.
I have some disappointing news...but also some very GOOD news.
First, the disappointing news: No, 100K did NOT actually enroll at HC.gov yesterday.
As I posted in my own entry about this story this morning:
There were more than a half million successful log-ins Saturday to HealthCare.Gov, 100,000+ people submitting applications.
— HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) November 16, 2014
OK, I'm as geeked as any ACA supporter, but some context and clarification is important here. Last year there was a
lot of confusion about the distinction between someone:
--creating an account
--submitting an application
--selecting/committing to a plan, and
--paying their first month's premium
The 8.02 million figure through April 19th touted by the administration last spring represented 3) Selecting a plan.
Of that, the actual number who followed through and 4) paid their first premium (thus activating--or "effectuating" to use the industry lingo--their policy) ended up being roughly 88%, or around 7.1 million.
Therefore, while more than 100K people 2) submitting applications on the first day is a very good sign, that isn't the same as 100K people being added to the spreadsheet as actually enrolling, whether paid or not.
HOWEVER, here's the other good news: A single application doesn't necessarily mean a single person!
One of the other data points which confused a lot of people in the early days last fall was the distinction between "policies" (households) and "lives covered" (people). My wife and I have one child. If we submit one application, the policy that we eventually select will actually count as three people enrolled.
The average household has roughly 2.5 people. However, in the interest of caution, I've always gone with a mere 1.8x factor when using "household" data.
In other words, assuming all 100K+ of those first-day applications actually go on to select a policy, that's likely to mean 180K - 250K people...and remember, that's just from the federal exchange at Healthcare.Gov. Assuming a similar 75/25 split between HC.gov and the state exchanges, that should mean upwards of 240K - 330K potential enrollees already.
The other point of confusion is that I don't know yet whether this refers to applications from people who aren't already enrolled or if it also includes people who are part of the 7M+ already enrolled who are switching policies (or are setting up a 2nd account due to confusion or life changes--for instance, what if a couple is getting divorced? They may both be enrolled for 2014, but for 2015 one of the spouses needs to set up their own separate account/application, and so forth).
All that being said, this bodes very well for the 2015 numbers as well as being a testament to the night-and-day improvements at HC.gov (which, you'll recall, enrolled a whopping total of 6 people on Day One last year).
As for hard actual enrollment numbers, I do have partial-day numbers from 6 states so far (most of these are literally for just 8 - 10 hours or so):
Hawaii: 41
Kentucky: 368
Maryland: 1 (seriously...it was a fluff piece about the 1st one in the state to enroll)
Massachusetts: 1,704
Minnesota: 201
Vermont: 201
Washington: 150
UPDATE: ARRRGH!! check this out from the
New York Times:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Sunday that 100,000 people had signed up for health insurance on the first day of open enrollment, and it offered practical advice to consumers who had been locked out of their accounts.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, cited the 100,000 applications as evidence that the refurbished website for the insurance marketplace was working for most users.
(sigh) I know yesterday was crazy busy, but this is the OPENING SENTENCE of the article. If I could think to double-check such a vital point, don't you think the NY Times should?
I've already contacted Mr. Pear and he's presumably correcting the lede sentence as I type this...
UPDATE x2: As long as I have your attention, here's the other ACA news of the day:
Who wants to watch two healthcare nerds flap our gums for an hour about #OE2??
REMINDER: Current ACA enrollees in at least 5 states will HAVE to manually re-enroll!!
First Official QHP Enrollment Numbers: 201 in VT, 1,704 in MA
Massachusetts: CUE GOP OUTCRY: ONLY 3.5% HAVE PAID!!!
Hawaii: 40+ QHPs on Day One of #OE2
Kentucky: 368 NEW QHPs on #OE2 Day One
Minnesota: 201 QHPs on Day One of #OE2
Maryland: At least 1 QHP on Day One of #OE2!
JUST TO CLARIFY: I am NOT the Customer Service Representative for Obamacare.
Washington State: At least 150 QHPs on #OE2 Day One
UPDATE x3: OK, I posted a HALF-SNARKY, HALF-SERIOUS update which speculates that it's conceivable that 100K enrollments very well MAY have been created on Day One after all:
That's a total of 2,665 confirmed from those 6 states (plus one from Maryland, which I posted as sort of a joke).
So, what can we extrapolate from this? Not much, but just for he heck of it, I'll take a crack:
All of those were from light news stories checking in during opening day; in most cases they only ran through the first 10-12 hours or so of Saturday, which means the numbers can almost certainly be doubled to at least 5,000.
In 2014 open enrollment, the 6 states above (not counting Maryland) enrolled a total of 372,784 out of 8,019,763 total nationally, or around 4.6% of the total.
IF (and this is a massive IF, of course) the same ratio held true nationally on Saturday (and no, I guarantee you that it didn't), that would mean that 5,000 enrollments in those 6 states would extrapolate out to...108,696 nationally.
Of course, that's using utterly illogical math; the numbers are going to fluctuate madly from day to day, hour to hour and state to state. The point is that yes a lot of people did enroll over the first weekend...just not necessarily "100,000 people" is all.