Florida’s Obamacare enrollment grows despite no penalty for lacking insurance in 2019

Jan. 04--Killing the tax penalty for lacking health insurance in 2019 was widely expected to suppress enrollment, but numbers released Thursday evening confirmed something odd happened in Florida.

The number of people signing up for policies actually increased in the state with the biggest participation in the federal health marketplace at healthcare.gov.

The final weekly enrollment snapshot for 2019 revealed 1,783,304 choosing plans in Florida, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced.

That exceeds last year's enrollment of 1,715,227, records show.

Then again, there were signs. By mid-December, insurers and sign-up helpers were reporting the busiest week of the season at sites including Florida Blue's walk-in center in Boynton Beach.

"We expect the number of Florida Blue enrollees with an Affordable Care Act plan to be in line with last year's numbers, and are proud to continue our longstanding role as the leading health insurer in Florida," company spokesman Doug Bartel said Friday.

"We're getting inundated," Jodi Ray, director of Florida Covering Kids and Families, a group that helps people enroll across the state, said last month.

The Trump administration effectively eliminated the penalty for not carrying health insurance in 2019, after paring back the sign-up period and reducing budgets for advertising and sign-up assistance. The penalty had ranged from $695 to 2.5 percent of qualifying income. The widely assumed result: There would be lower participation in the Affordable Care Act market widely known as Obamacare.

In addition, unemployment rates have been very low, presumably giving many people access to health plans at work.

Nationally, sign-ups on the federal exchange for 2019 decreased, though not as much as some had expected: to about 8.4 million from 8.7 million. It's possible Florida's enrollment could settle back slightly during the first quarter, as each year some people who sign up fail to make a payment.

But the snapshot numbers closed strong, Florida had as many as 623,000 uninsured people who might not realize they qualify for a 2019 "bronze" plan with $0 premiums after tax credits, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated.

That doesn't mean plans are entirely "free." Consumers might have to pay deductibles that average more than $6,000 a year under bronze plans if they use a lot of medical services.

Still, most Florida customers using healthcare.gov qualified for some level of federal tax credits to reduce their health costs, based on their income. After such credits, the average monthly premium in Florida was $70, according to data from federal officials.

Some big states including California and New York use their own state exchanges.

Texas was the state with the next largest enrollment on the federal exchange, with just under 1.1 million.

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