Demand for health insurance picks up as deadline looms
WASHINGTON — More than 1 million people signed up last week for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, pushing the total in the federal marketplace to nearly 4.7 million, the Trump administration said Wednesday, days before the annual enrollment period is scheduled to end.
The final deadline this year is on Friday.
The number of sign-ups on HealthCare.gov from Nov. 1 through Saturday was about 17 percent higher than the same time last year. But the final tally is likely to fall short of the 9.2 million who were in plans at the end of the last open enrollment period, which was twice as long as the current one.
Insurance counselors around the country, who help consumers enroll, said they had seen a surge of activity despite sharp increases in premiums, a smaller selection of health plans and confusion about the future of the Affordable Care Act after a year in which Republicans have repeatedly tried to dismantle the law.
About 1.4 million new customers have signed up this year, and 3.3 million people returned to HealthCare.gov to select the same plan or a different one for 2018.
People who have coverage this year and take no action may have their coverage automatically renewed. If their plan is no longer available, the government may assign them to another health plan offered by the same company or a different insurer, and that could significantly increase overall enrollment.
The numbers reported Wednesday were for the 39 states that use HealthCare.gov.
When the last open enrollment period closed in January, a total of 12.2 million people had signed up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act in federal and state marketplaces. But, the Trump administration said, some people failed to pay their premiums or found other sources of insurance, so the number with marketplace coverage declined to about 10 million by the end of June.
Among states using the federal exchange, the largest numbers of sign-ups in the last six weeks were in Florida (more than 1 million) and Texas (580,000).
Sign-ups this year are higher than at the same point last year in all states using the federal exchange except Louisiana and West Virginia. The greatest increases were in Mississippi (up 37 percent), Wyoming (34 percent) and Texas and North Dakota (29 percent each).
The Trump administration sharply reduced grants to insurance counselors known as navigators and cut spending for advertising to publicize open enrollment. But in their zeal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have heightened public awareness of the law.
“The political stigma has declined, and people see their neighbors who’ve got health coverage and are happier and healthier,” said Roy Mitchell, the executive director of the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program.
Chris Jacobs, a conservative health policy analyst, said the new numbers suggested that, after four years of marketplace operations, the federal government did not need to spend tens of millions of dollars selling the virtues of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.