Housekeeping: Two Major Changes to The Graph (1.4M *confirmed* QHPs)

I'm taking a break from the national panic over Trump's election to announce two subtle but important modifications to The Graph:

  • First: In yesterday's release of CMS's Weekly Snapshot Report from HealthCare.Gov for the first "2 weeks" of open enrollment, they explained that instead of running the weeks from Tuesday - Monday, they're going to measure them by the traditional calendar week (Sunday - Saturday). This means that the first two "weeks" are being cut off by 2 days (Nov. 1st - 12th instead of the 14th).

    Since all of the official reports going forward will be measured Sunday - Saturday, I've changed the graph to match. I've also modified my official Weekly Projections accordingly. It's important to clarify that the actual projections haven't changed at all, just the cut-off date (for instance, I originally projected 1.53 million people in the first 2 weeks (14 days); instead I now have it as 1.29 million in the first "2 weeks" (12 days). The actual projection itself hasn't changed at all.

  • Second: For three years now, I've included my estimate of the number of paid enrollments--that is, among those who select QHPs via the ACA exchanges, a certain percentage of them will end up not bothering to actually pay their first monthly premium, and will therefore never actually become effectuated. In 2014 this seemed to be around 12-14% of the total; as the system has become more streamlined and better at filtering out "junk" enrollments/etc, it's down to roughly 10% or so, where I expect it to stabilize permanently (or at least as long as the ACA exchanges are still around).

    The graph already has a lot going on which can confuse people, so I've decided to remove the "paid" projection line entirely to reduce the clutter. Going forward, just take whatever the "QHPs Selected" number is, lop 10% off of it, and you should have a good idea about "How Many Have Paid!!!"

With these changes in mind, here's the revised Graph, updated through last night, when the totals should have reached roughly 1.5 million via HealthCare.Gov and around 1.9 million nationally: