OK, now that both HHS and I agree that the ACA exchange target for the 2017 Open Enrollment Period is around 13.8 million QHP selections, it's time to dust off The Graph and reset it for 2017.
It was fairly easy to do so this time because this is the first year that the starting and ending dates match (November 1st to January 31st). All I really had to do was bump up the 1/31/17 projection from 12.7 million to 13.8 million, and the rest of the projection line adjusted accordingly.
With that in mind, the graph above shows how I expect things to play out for Year 4.
As noted here, both the HHS Dept. and I arrived at roughly the same estimate of how many people we expect to select exchange-based healthcare policies this season; I estimate between 13.5 — 14.0 million; they settled on roughly 13.8 million.
The way we arrive at that number is a bit different, however: They’re assuming about 700,000 more current people will renew their existing policies (or switch to new ones) than I do...but I’m assuming roughly 600,000 more people will shift from off-exchange policies to exchange-based ones than they do, basically cancelling each other out.
Either way, assuming 13.8 million is roughly accurate, that’s about 1.1 million more people who are expected to sign up than the 12.7 million who did for 2016.