Feds: Obamacare enrollment to rise 9% despite woes
The Obama administration said Wednes- day that it expected monthly enrollment in the Affordable Care Act marketplace to aver- age 11.4 million next year, up 9 percent from the monthly average this year, even though premiums are soaring and major insurers are abandon- ing the marketplace in many places.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, secretary of Health and Human Services, also predicted that 13.8 million peo- ple would sign up for coverage in the fourth annual open enrollment period, which starts Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 31. That represents an increase of 1.1 million people, or 9 percent, over the number who signed up in the last open enrollment season.
But Burwell obscured the problems of the marketplace by omitting a numerical goal on which she has focused in the past: the number of peo- ple who would still be on the rolls at the end of the year. Many people who sign up never activate their insurance or drop it during the course of the year because they fail to pay premiums or just terminate the coverage, in some cases after getting expensive medical treatment.
“We are not moving the goal posts,” said Kathryn E. Martin, an acting assistant sec- retary of Health and Human Services who helped develop the estimates. “We are just using what we believe is a more meaningful metric.”
Of the 12.7 million people who signed up in the last open enrollment period, which ended Jan. 31, only 10.5 mil- lion were on the rolls in June, a decline of 17 percent. And the administration expects enrollment to dip further, to 10 million at the end of this year, in keeping with a prediction Burwell made in October 2015.
Despite the recent problems, Burwell said she was “confident and excited about the future of the health insurance marketplace.” She said she would “use all the tools we have to build a stronger, more stable marketplace.”
Burwell’s upbeat, confident message contrasted with the perceptions of many insurers. In a letter to the Obama administration this month, Alissa Fox, a senior vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, expressed “concern about the future stability of the individual market.”
“Under current rules,” Fox said, “too many people are buying coverage when they need medical services and dropping it after receiving care. This has resulted in an out-of-balance risk pool, less competition, fewer consumer choices and much higher premiums — all of which pose a serious threat to future market sustainability.”
In an uncharacteristic jab, Burwell blamed Republicans for the troubles of the marketplace.
“At nearly every turn,” she said, “we’ve had to overcome partisan attempts to repeal and undermine the law through legislation and litigation.”
Republicans in Congress have voted more than 60 times to repeal all or parts of the law, which was passed in 2010 without any Republican votes.
Burwell’s announcement came one day before President Barack Obama is scheduled to travel to Florida for a speech on the health care law at Miami Dade College.