...but I was a bit confused when I read the opening quote from a CMS press release...
Nearly 50% increase in HealthCare.gov signups since President Biden took office
the Biden-Harris Administration announced that a record-breaking more than 16.3 million people have selected an Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace health plan nationwide during the 2023 Marketplace Open Enrollment Period (OEP) that ran from November 1, 2022-January 15, 2023 for most Marketplaces
...because this data, while certainly impressive, is literally a year out of date.
So how many people have actually enrolled in ACA coverage this Open Enrollment Period a year later?
The official CMS report is expected to be released sometime today, but they already confirmed that over 19 million people had enrolled in ACA coverage as of December 15th, and since then I’ve further confirmed that the actual total is at least 20.7 million...and that doesn’t include the ~1.3 million residents of Minnesota & New York who are enrolled in their states Basic Health Plan (BHP) programs, an offshoot of the ACA.
But wait, there’s more! The 2024 ACA Open Enrollment Period is still ongoing through at least Monday in every state except Idaho. In most states the deadline is Tuesday due to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and in a few states it’s as late as the end of the month!
Of course folks would know all this if they followed my diaries here or at ACASignups.net… ;)
Now, an apples to apples comparison would include all 50 states +DC (not just the HC.gov states), and would also include BHP enrollees; if you do that, the total to compare against was 12,289,645 enrollees during the 2020 Open Enrollment Period.
In any event, a more accurate headline would be to say that there’s been an 80% increase in ACA enrollments since President Biden took office.
#GetCovered TODAY!
BOOM: Biden-Harris Admin Announces Over 21.6M ACA Enrollees Thru 12/23, Record High W/A Week Or More Left To #GetCovered!
Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced today that over 20 million people have selected an Affordable Care Act (ACA) Health Insurance Marketplace plan since the 2024 Marketplace Open Enrollment Period launched on November 1 — a record number of enrollments.
Today’s data represents activity through December 23 (Week 8) for the 32 states using HealthCare.gov and for the 18 states and the District of Columbia with State-based Marketplaces. Total plan selections include more than 3.7 million people (18% of total) who are new to the Marketplaces for 2024, and 16.6 million people (82% of total) who had active 2023 coverage and selected a plan for 2024 coverage or were automatically re-enrolled. Plan selections so far represent an impressive increase of over 8 million more people who have coverage since President Biden took office.
As I go on to note in my blog post, the 20.3 million stated in the CMS press release only runs through December 23rd and doesn’t include the Basic Health Plan enrollees I mentioned above, so that’s 21.6 million right off the bat. There’s also likely been another good 700K — 1.0 million who have signed up (or are signing up this week) on top of that, which should put the final tally somewhere between 22.3 — 23.0 million when the dust settles at the end of January.
