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Sign-ups to Obamacare extended as subscribers increase
“Health plans will continue to do everything they can to help consumers through the enrollment process and mitigate potential confusion or disruption caused by all of these last-minute changes to the rules and deadlines,” Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s Washington lobby group, said in an e-mail.
While enrollment had been sluggish from the October 1 introduction of the marketplaces through November, sign-ups accelerated in December, Obama said at a December 20 news conference. More than 500,000 people in the 36 states served by the federal exchange selected plans in the first 3 weeks of the month, the president said.
Obama’s staff, in a symbolic move, signed the president up for a health-care plan this past weekend through the District of Columbia exchange, said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. While the president receives his health care from the military, he enrolled “as a show of support” for the new marketplaces, the White House said.
Obama’s exchange plan covers only himself, not his family, and the premium is less than US$400 per month, the White House said.
Officials in the Obama administration have said they anticipated the pace of enrollment would increase as the year-end coverage deadline approached. Similar increases have been seen by many of the 14 state-run exchanges, state officials said.
In New York, about 168,000 people signed up in private plans sold through the state exchange, Jeremy Pelofsky of Ketchum Inc., a spokesman for New York State of Health, said yesterday in an e-mail. In California, which also runs its own exchange, “our preliminary numbers are we’ve topped 400,000” enrollments in private plans, Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said.
California planned to close enrollment yesterday for policies starting January 1, Lee said, although anyone who started an application then will have coverage at the first of the year.
