Today the Washington Health Benefit Exchange announced that a record 230,591 people have selected qualified (private) health plans (QHP) through the Exchange. Dec. 15 was the deadline to sign up for coverage to begin Jan. 1, but enrollment is open until Jan. 15. That means that the number of plans selected will increase.

However, it is important to remember that these are plans selected, not plans paid. The actual number of enrollees will certainly be lower than 230,000. For example, in February, the Exchange announced that 225,000 had selected plans during last year’s open enrollment. But when it came to actually paying for those plans, the highest number of enrollees was 189,576 in March.

Speaking of enrollment data, I never wrote about the September 2017 enrollment report. Here’s an updated chart showing the QHP enrollments over time:

Through September, of the QHP enrollees in 2017, about 39 percent have been non-subsidized. As the chart below shows, this is a big increase over previous years. In September, the average monthly premium for an enrollee without subsidies was $383.25 versus $230.18 for an enrollee with them.