I'm mainly using this diary as a segue into the new menu link on ACA Signups: Past Projections.
I figured that I've earned the right to archive my accuracy record a bit at this point, so I've added a link to my Greatest Hits to the site, right under the March Projection link. Each projection is in turn linked to the earliest source I could find containing my projection (this was more difficult than you'd think, since I wasn't really making a big deal out of the estimates until the past month or so). A few of the earlier links actually go back to here at dKos, since I didn't even start the ACA Signups blog until early January.
Anyway, for the record, here's how I've done so far (original source links at the site):
Private QHPs: Total thru the end of December
My Projection, 12/25 2,100,000
Actual (HHS), 1/13 2,137,630
98.24% accurate
Medicaid/CHIP: Total thru the end of December
My Projection, 1/21 6,320,000
Actual (CMS), 1/22 "more than 6.3 million"
99.68% accurate
Private QHPs: Total thru the end of January
My Projection, 2/07 3,300,000
Actual (HHS), 2/12 3,299,492
99.98% accurate
Private QHPs: Percent Paid
My Estimate, 2/13 (10 AM) 75-80%
New York Times, 2/13 (5 PM) 75-80%
(basically the same)
Private QHPs: Total thru Feb. 19
My Projection, 2/19 3,860,000
Pres. Obama, 2/20 "close to 4M"
(at least 95% accurate)
Private QHPs: Total thru Feb. 24
My Projection, 2/25 (3:48pm) 4,013,762
Actual (HHS), 2/25 (5:59pm) 4,000,000
99.66% accurate
Private QHPs: Total thru the end of February
My Projection, 3/01 4,202,000
Actual (HHS), 3/13 4,242,325
99.05% accurate
California Hitting 1 Million Private QHP Enrollments:
On March 8th I projected CA hitting 1M on March 11th or 12th. However, I didn't realize at the time how ugly CoveredCA's mid-February outage had been.
Once I realized this, I revised my projection to sometime over that weekend instead; sure enough, they crossed the 1M mark on Friday the 14th.
National Exchange QHP Enrollments hitting 5 Million:
I originally projected total exchange QHPs to hit 5M on Tuesday, March 18th.
In the mid-afternoon on Monday, March 17th I realized that since CA has been averaging around 20% of the total QHPs all along, once they hit 1M, the national tally should hit around 5M at right around the same time, so I moved my 5M estimate up one day (actually, I suspected that they hit their milestone over the weekend just as CA did, but weren't going to announce it publicly until the next day).
Sure enough, a few hours later on Monday the HHS Dept. made the 5M announcement.
Naturally, now that I've gotten cocky about nailing the numbers so well, I'll probably blow the remaining ones, but we'll see how it goes...
Now for the bad news: Assuming I'm correct about hitting 5.5 million today, I think it's safe to say that 7 million is simply not in the cards.
5.5M by 3/23 would mean that March has averaged around 60,000/day.
That leaves only 8 days to enroll an additional 1.5 million people, or a whopping 187,500 per day for 8 days straight.
I noted a week ago that 100K - 150K is theoretically conceivable based on California hitting 30K in a single day back in December.
However, there's a huge difference between hitting 150K for a single day and 187K for 8 days straight. Just don't see it.
Unless we're already way ahead of 5.5M, the most I can reasonably see reaching would be 6.5M, which would mean around 125K/day...again, for 8 days straight.
Until I hear data otherwise, I'm still looking at around 6.2M as the 3/31 number at the moment.