The third open enrollment period of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange begins Nov. 1. For coverage beginning Jan. 1, 2016, people must purchase coverage by Dec. 23, but the open enrollment period doesn’t end until Jan. 31. Last week I wrote about the most recent enrollment report. Through Sept. 30, 2015, enrollment in qualified (private) health plans through the Exchange totaled 152,517 — 28.4 percent below the Exchange’s goal of 213,000. Enrollment appears to have leveled off. We’ll know better after this open enrollment period, but the Exchange has acknowledged that there will be “slower, incremental growth” in the future.

Since then, the Seattle Times has reported that the Exchange expects QHP enrollments to increase by 3 to 5 percent this enrollment period — to about 160,000 at the upper end. That’s 24.9 percent below last year’s goal. This reduction shows both that expectations were too rosy in the beginning and that the low-hanging fruit has been picked.

The Exchange points to a Gallup survey that

. . . found that the state’s uninsured rate has dropped more from 16.8% to 6.4% since the opening of the Exchange – the fifth highest such decline in the nation.

As the Times notes, “The big driver behind the newly insured has been the expansion of Medicaid.”