425,000 enroll in Covered California
THE White House announced that nearly 13 million Americans have signed up for the Affordable Care Act for 2016, before open enrollment deadline on Jan. 31.
The numbers of enrollment for federal insurance marketplaces yielded a modest gain of about 1 million customers for 2016, reported The Washington Post. Sign-ups exceeded the Obama administration’s initial estimates of around 10 million total.
During the third open-enrollment season, 9.6 million consumers chose coverage in the 38 states that use the federal marketplace on HealthCare.gov. An additional 3.1 million Americans selected health plans in states that run their own insurance exchanges.
“The marketplace is growing and getting stronger and the ACA has become a crucial part of healthcare in America,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, who announced final results of the three-month enrollment window.
“The totals exceed our expectations,” she told reporters.
The numbers were in line with recent predictions that overall growth in insurance coverage through the federal marketplaces is slowing sooner than originally expected, health policy experts said.
Of those who signed up through HealthCare.gov, 4 million people—about 2 in 5—are new customers. However, it is not clear how many of those were in the HHS outreach target group: the approximately 10.5 million Americans who remained uninsured, despite being eligible to buy insurance through the ACA.
In California, more than 425,000 residents have signed up for the state’s health insurance exchange, Covered California. At least 100,000 rushed to enroll in the last four days before the enrollment period ended, according to California Healthline.
Covered California estimated that it would attract between 295,000 and 450,000 new enrollees during the third season since taking effect. In addition to those new enrollees, about 1.15 million existing consumers renewed their plans this year, totaling to about 1.57 million, officials said.
“We continue to have a broad and healthy mix of those signing up for coverage…which means better rates and a more stable system, both for all of our enrollees, and for the entire individual health insurance marketplace in California,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered CA, which has served over 2 million Californians.
Lee did not provide additional information on the ethnic and demographic breakdown of new enrollees or the health plans they chose, saying the numbers were “still being analyzed.”
The administration faced an uphill battle to reach those who remained uninsured. Many of those in great need have already obtained coverage in recent years.
Still, the latest numbers provide important signs of how the federal exchanges, a major feature of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care law, are functioning now that they are no longer new.
The figures show that most repeat customers were warned by HHS officials that they should return to HealthCare.gov to shop for the best available health plan if they wanted to avoid sticker shock. On the federal exchange, nearly 7 in 10 repeat customers shopped for different coverage, rather than renew automatically, and about three-fifths of those people switched plans entirely. Last year, nearly half of consumers were auto-enrolled.
This year, more consumers picked health plans during the first two months of the sign-up period, which ended Jan. 1. In contrast to the past two years, there was less of the last-minute surge of people rushing to sign up during the final days and hours of the enrollment period.
In the last two years, enrollment has slowly slipped over the periods. At the end of the 2015 enrollment season, 11.7 million people were signed up–the number that dropped to 9.3 million by early fall. Officials have not released the year-end tally for 2015.
Overall, fewer Americans are projected to sign up for individual coverage. The Congressional Budget Office lowered its estimate to 13 million enrollees for 2016, down from earlier economic projections of 21 million, said Boston’s WCVB5.
In the federal marketplace, 2.7 million young people ages 18 to 34 signed up for coverage—28 percent of the total, the same proportion as last year. Obama administration officials said the exchanges would work well early on if slightly more than one-third of enrollees were young adults.
The ACA’s figures don’t include further detail about states with their own private marketplaces. The final tally, however, includes everyone who opted for a health plan, whether or not they begin to pay the monthly premiums that put their coverage in effect.
“Open enrollment 3 was very successful,” said Andy Slavitt, acting administer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In each of the past two years, enrollment has slipped as the months go by. At the end of the 2015 enrollment season, 11.7 million people were signed up, a number that dropped to 9.3 million by early fall. HHS officials have not released the year-end tally for 2015.
The new figures suggest that HHS officials were realistic in the fall when they forecast that enrollment by the end of this year would be about 10 million — about half of what congressional budget analysts had forecast. Last week, the budget analysts lowered their own expectations, saying that, on average, 13 million people would have marketplace health plans throughout this year.
Most people who fail to sign up by the deadlines face tax penalties for themselves and their families.
“Because consumers can change plans during open enrollment, those who switched to the lowest-cost plan in their area could lower their premiums by an average of 4.5 percent this year [in California],” Lee said.
Although open enrollment ended on January 31, families still may be able to get covered through the Marketplace, Medicaid, or CHIP, as well as in life-altering circumstances. Consumers can visit www.healthcare.gov for important information and coverage options, and enrollment deadlines. The next open enrollment period for coverage in 2017 will start in November. (Allyson Escobar / AJPress)
