I’ve noted that the Washington Health Benefit Exchange (HBE) did not meet its enrollment goals for the open enrollment period that ended in February. Yesterday the HBE released final enrollment numbers through March 9. Some highlights and comments:

• A total of 158,302 either newly enrolled or renewed their coverage in qualified (private) health plans (QHP). Of those, 124,175 (77 percent) received federal tax credits to offset the cost of the premiums.
• New enrollees in QHPs totaled 66,961 — 78.8 percent of the HBE’s goal.
• QHP renewals totaled 91,341 — 70.3 percent of the HBE’s goal.
• Of QHP enrollees, 8 percent were aged 18-25 and 16 percent were aged 26-34.
• 42,048 disenrolled in 2014. Of those, 59.9 percent were due to non-payment and the rest were voluntary.
• Enrollees paid $60.2 million in premiums, and received $32.6 million in tax credits. The premium per person without assistance was $384.19, while the premium per person with assistance was $174.38.
• As far as Medicaid goes, the report only includes the numbers of new enrollees under the Affordable Care Act’s expansion: 533,628.

The HBE’s budget depends in part on the number of its enrollees. It will be interesting to see how much extra the state will kick in (if any) to help the HBE meet its target budget.

Additionally, the New York Times has an interesting article about how enrollment in many states that run their own exchanges has slowed down:

Over all, state and federal exchanges look fairly similar in the percentage of eligible people they have enrolled — on average, 43 percent of eligible people in the states in the federal system picked health plans, compared with 38 percent in the state-run marketplaces — but the 2015 increases look much, much smaller for the state marketplaces.

If the states did everything right in the first year and have stalled, what does that say about what we can expect from all the states in Year 3?

“I think the concern about running out of momentum is legitimate,” said Jon Kingsdale, the former executive director of the health exchange in Massachusetts, before the Affordable Care Act, and now a director at the Wakely Consulting Group. Mr. Kingsdale said that states should be aiming to sign up 65 to 75 percent of eligible residents. “If we end up running out of gas before 50 percent, that’s very disappointing.”

According to the article, Washington did not increase its share of potential market enrolled from 2014 to 2015, and it has signed up about 30 percent of the potential market.

Analysts who were worried said the cause for their concern was not the overall enrollment, but the slowdown in many of the states that did well last year. . . .

Caroline Pearson, a vice president at the consulting firm Avalere Health, which advises insurers and health care providers, said the numbers had led her to downgrade the estimates she would share with clients. “Why did the states hit such a wall?” she said. “I’m starting to wonder if we’ve overestimated the whole thing.”