Over the past week or so, a few more state-based ACA exchanges have quietly published their final, official 2026 ACA Open Enrollment Period data, including Connecticut (157,246 plan selections), New Jersey (509,192), the District of Columbia (16,053) and Virginia (370,088). With these updates, practically all of the official 2026 OEP topline numbers are now filled in except for the following:
About a month ago, I once again reiterated that the official year over year ACA Open Enrollment Period plan selection drop from OEP 2025 to OEP 2026, which currently stands at around 1.26 million people (23.06M in 2026 vs. 24.32M in 2025) was incredibly misleading for a number of reasons:
Not only are there always some people who never have their enrollment effectuated in the first place due to either the policyholder actively cancelling their policy before it even begins or having it terminated by the carrier due to them not paying their first monthly premium, but that effectuated enrollment can vary widely from month to month due to the "churn" of people either starting or ending exchange coverage.
