December 7, 2017

Obamacare Signups Hit 6 Million

Here’s the latest estimate of Obamacare signups:

Just a reminder of my seat-of-the-pants methodology here: We know the numbers for the federal exhange (HC.gov), and they’re currently up by 22 percent compared to last year. So I’m projecting that the total number is about 22 percent higher than last year as well. That gets us to just above 6 million total signups.

Charles Gaba, naturally, has much more detail here. He notes that signups this week for HC.gov came in below his expectations, but some of the state exchanges have announced impressively large numbers.

Will we match the 12 million total signups from last year? Auto-renewals will kick in shortly and add 1-2 million to the total number, and next week will presumably bring a flurry of last-minute signups. By then we’ll have a pretty good idea. But the final numbers won’t be available for another month after that, since some state exchanges have signup deadlines in January.

My guess: it will be close, probably around 11-12 million.

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