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More than 2 million Americans have signed up for individual health coverage under the Affordable Care Act in the first three weeks of a sign-up window that the Donald Trump White House cut in half.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Wednesday said nearly 2.3 million Americans have selected Obamacare plans through Nov. 18 , of an open enrollment period that began Nov. 1 and runs to Dec. 15. The signups only include the 39 states using the healthcare.gov platform, which leaves out states like California where the state has its own exchange and Obamacare has been very popular.
The Obamacare sign-ups in the first 18 days of this year’s enrollment are well ahead of last year’s pace when 2.1 million people signed up through Nov. 26, 2016 for this year’s coverage in the most comparable statistics available on the CMS web site.
It’s unclear, however, whether Obamacare enrollment will finish ahead of last year’s pace because the Trump administration went along with a health insurance industry plea to cut the sign-up window in half. In past years, Americans could sign up into the first month of January of the following year but insurers said they wanted a narrower window so they could better "risk plan."
“The shorter period could simply mean that more enrollments are being ‘front-loaded’ this year,” Charles Gaba , an analyst who runs the popular web site ACAsignups.net, which tracks Obamacare wrote in a new report. “It’s still all about how big the Dec. 15 surge is, along with how many new enrollees are added.”
Another wild card that could boost Obamacare sign-ups could be the constant attacks on the health law over the last year by Trump and the Republican-led Congress. “While Trump slashed funding for advertising by 90% and outreach/navigators by 40%, that very controversy and confusion has also triggered a massive grassroots effort to get the word out to a degree, which far surpasses earlier ‘unofficial’ efforts to do so,” Gaba said.
Inside Obamacare: The Fix For America’s Ailing Health Care System explores the ways the Affordable Care Act will impact your health care.
To combat the smaller government marketing budget for Obamacare, some health plans like Oscar Health said they began marketing in September. “The Get Covered campaign is resonating with Americans, as we’ve seen a 45% increase in shoppers coming to hioscar.com to buy an Oscar plan,” Oscar Health senior vice president of marketing Sara Rowghani said earlier this week of the first two weeks consumers could select plans.
Oscar is among the health plans including Centene, Medica and certain Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans that expanded its individual insurance offerings in more states for 2018. Their moves come as Aetna, UnitedHealth Group and Humana scaled back their Obamacare business after being unable to manage the costs of sick patients signing up for individual coverage.
