Americans are signing up for Obamacare in record numbers
Why it matters: The Affordable Care Act is expanding its reach.
Despite a recent warning from former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the latest surge in market enrollment is evidence to the lasting force of the law.
Legislation passed earlier during the Covid-19 pandemic increased federal subsidies for people who bought plans, lowering costs for many Americans. The Biden administration also extended the sign-up period and increased advertising for the program and funding for so-called navigators who help people enroll.
“More and more people are realizing they can get into the marketplace,” said Cynthia Cox, director of the Program on the Affordable Care Act at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group.
She added: “Just because the ACA has been around for a while doesn’t mean people who need to sign up for it know how to do so.”
One eye-popping statistic: 750,000 registrations in one day.
On Dec. 15 — the deadline to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1 — nearly 750,000 people opted for a marketplace plan on HealthCare.gov. It was the largest daily total to date.
Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a health economist at Harvard who served in the Biden administration, said the improved reach helped explain the record enrollments. “I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said.
With years of increased subsidies, he added, “this could be the natural growth rate in a few years in a new policy environment.”
Kody Kinsley, North Carolina’s top health official, said his state had gotten creative in using its efforts to expand Medicaid and also enroll people in marketplace plans.
“We have had a very broad education and outreach campaign – with community organizations, churches and navigators – built around expansion to educate people about eligibility,” he said in a text message.
He added, “As part of that, we are supporting people to get coverage on the marketplace if they don’t qualify” for Medicaid.
What’s next: Applications will take almost a month.
The open enrollment period on Healthcare.gov runs through mid-January and ends on January 17 at 5 a.m. Eastern Time. People who register by then will have coverage from February.
Biden administration officials said they were encouraging enrollees already covered by HealthCare.gov to continue shopping for plans, in case a new option proves to be better and more affordable.
The Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces have become particularly valuable to the people who lost Medicaid coverage this year after a federal policy that guaranteed coverage before the pandemic ended in April.
The millions of people Issuing Medicaid rolls has contributed to the market’s enrollment increase, Ms. Cox said, and spikes during normally sleepier periods outside of open enrollment. (Certainly life events(such as the sudden loss of other health care coverage means some Americans may be able to get new plans outside of the open enrollment period.)
Enrollment in marketplace plans increased by 1.6 million people between March and September, or 1.5 million more than the same period last year, according to federal health officials.