Health plan sign-up period ends

WASHINGTON — A deadline rush of sign-ups after a tumultuous year for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has revealed continued demand for the program’s subsidized individual health plans.

Official numbers show a sizable share of first-time customers — 36 percent — were among those rushing to finish HealthCare.gov applications before Friday’s enrollment deadline.

“People need health care, that is plain and simple,” said Kevin Watkins of Florence, Ala. Watkins, a self-employed consultant helping small businesses sell online, re-enrolled for 2018. He’ll pay less than $100 a month after subsidies.

Final national enrollment numbers for the Obama administration program aren’t expected until next year because some states running their own insurance websites extended sign-ups to Jan. 31.

Enrollment in the 39 states served by HealthCare.gov is expected to be lower. President Donald Trump and his administration earlier decided to shorten the federal sign-up period by half.

Callers to the HealthCare. gov service center Saturday morning got a recorded message saying “don’t worry” — if they had left their phone numbers before Friday’s deadline, they will get a return call and still can enroll for 2018.

Nationally, 12.2 million people had enrolled by the end of the Obama administration’s final sign-up period. Under Trump, there could be 1 million to 2 million fewer sign-ups, said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

The health law’s full repeal now seems to be off the table in the GOP-controlled Congress. But the GOP tax bill would repeal the law’s requirement that people have health insurance or risk having to pay fines.

Parallel to that, the administration is preparing to issue rules facilitating the sale of lower-cost insurance plans that will deliver less than the current law’s “essential” benefits package.

Put the combination together and experts say healthy customers will steer away from shaky Affordable Care Act insurance markets, raising premiums for those left behind and giving insurers new reasons to drop out.

The law’s supporters were still upbeat as the shortened open enrollment season in most states wound down.

“What we are seeing is that this insurance is meeting people’s needs and it is affordable if you receive financial assistance,” said Elizabeth Colvin of Foundation Communities, a nonprofit in Austin, Texas, that helps low-income people enroll. “So much of the story has been telling people that the [Affordable Care Act] is not working. That’s not the reality in central Texas.”

It was Trump who said this year that the system was “imploding.”

After repealing the law failed in Congress, Trump stopped payments to reimburse insurers for subsidizing copayments and deductibles, thereby raising premiums.

But as premiums increased, financial assistance also went up for those eligible. Under the law, their premiums are limited to a percentage of household income, so those who qualify for help are cushioned from premium spikes.

Instead, the full impact of rising premiums hit an estimated 8 million to 9 million people who buy individual health plans but aren’t eligible for income-based assistance.