Yesterday Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post interviewed the Washington Healthplanfinder CEO, Richard Onizuka. She writes:

Washington, alongside Vermont, leads the nation in percentage of eligible population enrolled in its exchange. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 33.1 percent of Washingtonians eligible to sign up for coverage through the exchange have gone ahead and done so (in Vermont, it’s around 33.4 percent).

That enrollment number is too high. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) defines those “eligible for marketplace coverage” as “legally-residing individuals who are uninsured or purchase non-group coverage, have incomes above Medicaid/CHIP eligibility levels, and who do not have access to employer-sponsored coverage.” It defines “individuals who have selected a marketplace plan” as those who have selected a plan — whether they have made a payment or not.

As Kliff writes,

Washington is one of the few states that actually collect the first month’s premium payment and then send the money to the insurance company. Under Healthcare.gov, and most other state exchanges, the health insurance plans are responsible for tracking down that first check. This means that Washington has really robust data on who has actually paid for their plans. On the other hand, it means more administrative work for the state. When asked if he would do it again, Onizuka said that “the grass is always greener on the other side.” But, taken together, this seems to have given Washington a better grasp on how well the exchange is working and who is fully completing the sign-up process.

Indeed, Washington’s enrollment reports show how many people have actually purchased qualified (private) health plans (QHP) versus how many applications are merely in-process. Still, the KFF estimates use the sum of the two.

Today the Washington Healthplanfinder released a report on enrollments through Jan. 30. QHP enrollments total 88,071. In-process applications total 87,524. Using Washington’s actual paid enrollments and KFF’s estimate of Washington’s eligible population, the percentage of Washington’s eligible population enrolled in the exchange is 17.4 percent. (The estimates for the other states are so low — despite the inflated enrollment numbers — that 17.4 percent still puts Washington in second place.)

More from the Healthplanfinder report: Enrollments in Medicaid by those who are newly eligible under the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of the program total 172,715. Enrollments in Medicaid by those who were eligible for Medicaid under previous eligibility criteria but had not enrolled total 84,372. Medicaid re-determinations (enrollments in Medicaid who had already been in the program but needed to re-apply) total 259,817.