Now it's time to move on to the actual demographic breakout of 2026 Open Enrollment Period (OEP) Qualified Health Plan (QHP) enrollment.
First up: Breaking out new enrollees vs. existing enrollees who either actively re-enroll in an exchange plan for another year or who passively allow themselves to be automatically renewed into their current plan (or to be "mapped" to a similar plan if the current one is no longer available).
Nationally, 15.6% of all exchange QHP enrollees were new this year. The other 84.4% are current enrollees who signed up for another year.
Fortunately, more enrollees took my advice and actively re-enrolled this year (46.3% vs just 39% last year). Unfortunately, 38.1% still allowed themselves to be passively auto-renewed. Those are the ones who, in many cases, were likely hit with massive sticker shock as they were auto-renewed into a plan which probably had dramatically higher premiums due to the enhanced tax credits expiring...over 8.8 million enrollees nationally.
When I last checked in on the official 2026 ACA Open Enrollment Period (OEP) data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), they had published the "top line" enrollment numbers for each state, including final numbers for the 30 states hosted via the federal ACA exchange (HealthCare.Gov) and semi-final data for the remaining 20 states (+DC) which operate their own ACA exchanges.
I've repeatedly warned that the final, official CMS 2026 OEP report--which includes far more detailed demographic data including breakouts by metal level, income brackets, financial assistance and so forth likely wouldn't be published until late April or early May based on last year when it wasn't published until May 11th.
Well, it turns out they moved that up substantially after all: The final 2026 OEP Public Use File was just uploaded at CMS today...and while there hasn't been any formal press release published yet, I have a copy regardless.
