Some 8.8 million people have signed up for 2018 coverage on the federal exchange during an open enrollment season that was half the length of prior years and far less promoted, the Trump administration said Thursday. That’s only 400,000 fewer than signed up on healthcare.gov during open enrollment a year ago.
Nearly 2.4 million consumers were new to the exchanges, while more than 6.4 million continued their coverage during the period, which ran from Nov. 1 through Dec. 15.
Traffic was heavy in the final days. More than 4.1 million people selected plans in the last five days, including those who were automatically renewed.
Doomsday headlines about Obamacare enrollment may be having an unforeseen consequence: booming sign-ups in the troubled insurance marketplaces.
Obamacare’s fifth open enrollment season, the first under President Donald Trump, is off to a surprisingly robust start despite the brutal developments of the past year — skyrocketing premiums, dwindling competition, unremitting Republican efforts to eradicate it.
Poor Americans in states that have expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act are going to the doctor more often and having less trouble paying for it, new research finds.
At the same time, two years of experience with the expansion offer additional indications that the improved access to care will ultimately improve patients’ health, a key goal of 2010 law, often called Obamacare.
If the next president and Congress repeal Obamacare — as many Republican elected officials want to do — there could end up being more people without health insurance than before the law went into effect, a new study says.
A total of 24 million more people would lose health coverage by 2021 if the Affordable Care Act was repealed, according to the study issued Monday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute.
Millions of poor Americans have signed up for no-cost health insurance that they could have gotten even without the passage of Obamacare.
These Americans already were eligible for Medicaid, a government-funded program that provides medical coverage at little or no cost, but they didn’t sign up for it because they didn’t have to or because they didn’t realize they could.
In recent years, however, the publicity of Obamacare has driven them to sign up in droves, so much so that economists and health policy wonks have dubbed the phenomenon the “woodwork effect,” or the “welcome mat” population. This group turned out to be larger than anyone anticipated.
New exchange enrollment data released by the Obama administration reveal in multiple ways that Obamacare is failing to live up to its goal of providing affordable care.
That’s no small problem when the law mandates that people buy coverage or face a fine. The fact that enrollment grew only modestly in the law’s third year despite the ramping up of the mandate penalty underscores the reality that Obamacare only offers poor options to far too many millions of people.
The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has its share of detractors in the Republican party. In fact, many of them are currently running for that party’s presidential nomination. But in June, one lifelong Wisconsin Republican, Brent Brown, wrote a letter to the president about the ACA. And unlike most of his party, Brent had changed his mind on the bill. Why? Because it saved his life.
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