California reaches record high Obamacare enrollment

Feb. 07--Political turmoil did not stop about 400,000 Californians form signing up for Obamacare policies over the last fourth months, according to open enrollment figures released Monday.

Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange, said in a statement that between 368,000 and 412,000 Californians selected plans for the first time from Nov. 1, 2016 through Jan. 31, 2017. That's in addition to the 1.3 million who were already enrolled when the Affordable Care Act's fourth open enrollment season began.

The exchange is not yet certain how many of its existing customers stuck around. It estimated Monday that about 1.2 million renewed for 2017 but will not know for sure until insurers can reconcile health plan selections made in recent months with the number of families that actually paid their first-month premiums.

If its early estimate is correct, then Covered California's total enrollment for this year would exceed 1.5 million, the highest total since it started operating in the fall of 2013.

Local enrollment growth bucks the national trend.

According to a statement released Friday, sign ups on federally-operated exchanges fell 27.5 percent from 12.7 million last February to 9.2 million this year. About 3 million of those were new customers while more than 6 million renewed existing plans. Those numbers came as federally-operated exchanges saw a 25 percent average premium increase and a 28 percent decrease in the number of insurance companies offering Obamacare policies.

Covered California, which stuck with an aggressive promotions campaign from November through January, saw premium increases that were generally milder than those in other states and did not see the number of carriers offering plans decrease.

In its statement, Covered California touted its success in courting younger Californians -- 18- to 34 -year-olds -- who made up 37 percent of new enrollments compared to 34 percent in 2015 and 29 percent in 2014.

It remains unclear what will happen with Obamacare in the long term, though President Donald Trump recently said repealing his predecessor's health insurance program may not happen until 2018.

paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1850

Twitter: @paulsisson

___

(c)2017 The San Diego Union-Tribune

Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.