Nearly 1.3M get on ACA plans

Enrollment in Affordable Care Act health plans jumped 15 percent in Texas this year, driven by a pandemic that spurred widespread losses of jobs and employer-sponsored insurance as well as deeper anxieties about catastrophic illnesses.

Nearly 1.3 million Texans signed up for plans during the open enrollment period that ended Dec. 15, up from 1.1 million last year, according to federal data.

This marks the first time the federal insurance exchange has been open during an economic downturn, showing that the ACA can fill gaps in health coverage when unemployment rises, analysts said. Still, they added, the health care law remains insufficient to meet all the needs created by the pandemic and the resulting recession, meaning many more Texans are going without health insurance.

“I assume this scratches the surface and that the uninsured population has grown simultaneously as enrollment does,” said Stacey Pogue, a senior analyst at Every Texan, an Austin think tank.

One in five Texans are uninsured, according to Census data. That number may have increased to one in three during the pandemic, according to estimates from the Episcopal Health Foundation, a Houston-based health advocacy nonprofit.

Data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services showed that 8.2 million people in the United States enrolled in health coverage through federal exchanges, about on par with the 8.3 million enrolling last year. This year’s figures, however, do not include enrollments from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which left the federal exchange to start their own insurance marketplaces.

The two states last year accounted for about 7 percent of federal enrollment, or about 580,000.

In Texas, the increase in enroll

ment was aided by changes in the market, Pogue said. More insurers offered coverage major counties, as well as competitive pricing.

Nationally, enrollment was spurred by people renewing their coverage, rather than enrolling for the first time during the six weeks of open enrollment, according to federal data. Daniel McDermott, a senior researcher at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a think tank, said more people likely chose to keep coverage out of concerns they could be uninsured and come down with COVID-19. Additionally, people who picked health insurance plans during special enrollment periods after losing jobsponsored insurance or moving would have renewed during open enrollment to stay covered in 2021.

“The marketplace has functioned well as a safety net for people who have lost their coverage during the pandemic,” McDermott said.