OK, this doesn't really change the numbers beyond a couple hundred, but it's encouragingto see that my "15% in Non-Expansion States" rule of thumb for estimating the number of people who fall into the "woodworker" category seems to be pretty accurate, at least in Indiana:
Even without expanding eligibility for Indiana Medicaid, the program had enrolled 40,577 more Hoosiers as of March than it had in the same month last year.
More than 15,000 of that year-over-year increase occurred in March alone this year, as a flood of people here and nationally sought coverage before Obamacare would hit them with a tax for going uninsured.
If you take a look at the Medicaid Spreadsheet, you'll see that I currently have the "woodworker" tally for Indiana at 40,951...only 374 more than the number reported above.
That 40,951 is 15% of the combined total number of new Medicaid enrollments for Indiana from both the HC.gov website as well as through traditional state Medicaid agency offices (273,005).
UPDATE: On the down side, I was off by 4% this time around.
On the up side, I UNDERESTIMATED:
Actual Feb. enrollments: 942,833, for a total of 4,242,325 thru 3/01/14.
Sarah Kliff at Vox just announced that the February HHS report is expected to be released today at around 4:00pm. A few items in anticipation of that:
As I've noted several times, I'm projecting the report to total around 902,000 exchange-based private QHP enrollments for the month of February (technically 2/02 - 3/01)
If accurate, this would bring the cumulative total of exchange-based private QHP enrollments to 4.202 million (from 10/1/13 - 3/01/14)
From the data I have, the average daily enrollment rate in February was almost identical to that of January, which had about 1.146 million QHP enrollments. HOWEVER, the January report included five weeks of data (12/28 - 2/01), while the February report will only include four weeks (2/02 - 3/01). Therefore, even at the same daily average, it'll be about 20% lower no matter what.
Don't be surprised if Peter Lee of CoveredCA decides to steal some thunder by announcing that California has enrolled 1,000,000 QHPs all by itself either today or tomorrow. However, that would include the past 10 days, while the HHS number will only run thru 3/01.
If you want to get REALLY specific, call it 902,800 and 4,202,292.
I've been dead-on target 6 times in a row without hyping up my projections beforehand. This time I am hyping myself up beforehand, so I'll probably be way off...but as long as I've UNDERestimated the tally, I'll be perfectly fine with that...
The report will be released in about 5 minutes, but my kid gets home from school in about 10, so it'll be a good 20 minutes before I can really post anything. Feel free to follow Sarah Kliff of Vox in the meantime!
