Thread by @charles_gaba

THREAD: Let me tell you a small story from the first #ACA Open Enrollment Period which seems relevant here. 1/

https://twitter.com/EvanMcS/status/1456248799848980481

In Sept. 2013, prior to the first Open Enrollment Period starting on October 1st, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sent an internal projection of how many people they expected to enroll each month of the first 6-month OEP to the HHS Secretary: acasignups.net/sites/default/…

When the reports for each month came out, there were various news stories claiming that enrollment had dropped by 20% from January to February (1,161,862 to 942,833). DISASTER!!

HOWEVER, if you look at the actual reports, that's not what happened at all. 2/

You see, at the time CMS's *monthly* reports all ran by *calendar* weeks (Sunday - Saturday), which meant that the January report actually started on 12/29/13 and ended on 2/01/14.
acasignups.net/sites/default/…

That's 5 full weeks, or 35 days.

The February report, by contrast, ran from 2/02/14 - 3/01/14...4 weeks, or 28 days.
acasignups.net/sites/default/…

In other words, January 2014 ACA enrollment averaged 33,196/day, while February 2014 enrollment averaged 33,673/day...or 1.4% *higher*, not 20% *lower*.

Now, as it turned out, the original CMS projection email ended up being way off on the monthly numbers as well...

...in fact, the final total for the first OEP ended up being over *8* million...or 13% *higher* than that memo expected. This was a GOOD thing.

The point is that a bunch of reporters at the time didn't bother looking at the actual start/end dates of the reports.