Minnesota: 111,677 QHPs thru 1/09; 5 days left to #GetCovered!

MNsure, Minnesota's ACA exchange, has just posted their latest official enrollment numbers. It's only a minor update from this unofficial 110K figure a week ago, but every enrollment counts.

111,667 QHP selections bumps them up another 1,667, with 5 days left to go for Minnesota residents to #GetCovered for 2018. It's worth noting that enrollment in MinnesotaCare, MN's name for the ACA's Basic Health Program, has actually dropped slightly since the last hard number update I confirmed back in mid-November (93,049).

Here's some more noteworthy data nuggets from the MNsure Board of Director's Meeting slideshow:

27% of MNsure's QHP selections are from new enrollees, and 10,724 people selected standalone Dental plans (I don't really track dental plan enrollment, but it's important).

Minnesota loaded their CSR costs onto on-exchange Silver plans only, so they technically fall under the "Silver Switcharoo" category...but only a 11.1% of exchange enrollees receive CSR assistance in the first place in MN due to the MinnesotaCare program cannibalizing most potential CSR recipients, so there simply isn't that much CSR cost to load. As a result, there's been almost no metal level shifting in Minnesota. The market share between carriers has jumped around a bit. The age brackets have also shifted a bit, but not for the better: 18-34 year olds went from 22.8% of all enrollees last year to 20.9% so far this year. However, younger enrollees tend to wait until the last minute, so the final enrollment surge over these final 5 days could shift those numbers back.

Interestingly, while I still expect the percentage of ACA exchange enrollees who are subsidized to increase nationally, in Minnesota specifically it's on track to drop by several percent (64% of enrollees were subsidized last year; this year it's currently at 60.2%)

THIS is the type of granular data which is difficult for me to come by: Effectuated enrollments by month. When you ignore the SHOP numbers (Minnesota is among the few states which even bother reporting SHOP enrollees), individual market QHP effectuations averaged 88,933 per month in 2017. When compared against the 114,810 total QHP selections during OE4, that's an average effectuation rate of 77.5%...which is slightly below the 2016 national average of 78.9%.