6M health enrollees in sight

More than 1 million rush insurance site

WASHINGTON The government will meet — and possibly exceed — its goal of 6 million people enrolled in insurance through the federal and state health exchanges by Monday’s deadline, analysts said Wednesday.

Although the enrollment figures will probably not reach the 7 million that the Congressional Budget Office had estimated would be needed to ensure the financial health of the insurance market, they seem on track to surpass the 6 million number the Obama administration wants to reach by March 31.

“It’s clear that March is going to be better than February,” said Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere Health, a health care consulting firm. “They could do something over six.”

Tuesday, 1.2 million people visited HealthCare. gov, and the website was able to handle the volume, said Julie Bataille, communication director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The government expected “unprecedented demand,” she said, and the website could handle up to 100,000 people at a time.

Edmund Haislmaier, senior research fellow for health policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank, said it’s hard to predict the end- of- theweek numbers. “As far as data, we won’t see anything for a while that’s reliable,” he said.

After February’s slower- than- expected enrollment statistics were released this month, Avalere predicted the Department of Health and Human Services would enroll 5.4 million people by March 31. It changed its prediction after seeing marketing efforts by the Obama administration and advocacy groups and the surge of visitors to the federal website this week.

“It’s based on the first couple of weeks of March, and frankly, it’s based on conversations that we’ve had with people at CMS who have been very optimistic about the amount of engagement they’re getting,” Mendelson said. “The health plans, who are our customers, are also really busy. They’re telling us that the enrollment in the last couple of weeks has been brisk.”

President Obama’s appearances on social media, ramped- up advertising by the insurers and more in- person events by states and health care advocates have turned the tide, Mendelson said. “There’s been a lot more noise and a lot more engagement, and that’s what you need.”

“I think we would say [ hitting 6 million] is entirely feasible,” said Ceci Connolly, director of the Health Research Institute. “We certainly have seen heavy traffic on the website.”