UnitedHealth announced last week that it will leave health insurance exchanges in at least 22 states, in an attempt to "stem losses from participating." One of those states is Washington. The Association of Washington Business quotes the Washington Health Benefit Exchange on the news:

This change will likely have little to no effect on the Exchange’s individual market where UHC had less than 2% of the enrollment. However, this will affect the Exchange’s small business marketplace where UHC was providing insurance products statewide. At this time it appears that the Exchange may be without an insurance carrier offering statewide products in the small business marketplace for 2017.

Prior to the announcement about leaving 22 states, the Kaiser Family Foundation looked at the extent of UnitedHealth's participation in the Affordable Care Act markets.

In Washington, according to Kaiser, the loss of UnitedHealth (if not replaced by another insurer) would mean that 41 percent of exchange enrollees (in 16 counties) would have only one insurer option instead of two.

Meanwhile, what were the final enrollment numbers from the 2015-16 open enrollment period on the Washington exchange? It's still unclear. As I've noted, the three enrollment updates provided for this open enrollment period were based on plans selected, not plans paid. In previous years, enrollment data was for plans paid (a more reliable data point — a person could select a plan but then not pay for it) because before this year the Exchange collected payment from enrollees. The insurance companies do that now.

According to the Exchange, they will be releasing final enrollment numbers based on plans paid next month.