Insurance Exchange Sign-Ups Fall

The number of Pennsylvania residents signing up for health insurance through healthcare.gov dropped about 13,000 from last year, according to federal administrators.

Preliminary totals from the federal Affordable Care Act marketplace at the end of open enrollment stood at 426,059 statewide for 2017, about a 3 percent drop from 439,238 in 2016.

Nationwide, the tally is about 9.2 million, compared to about 9.6 million last year. Those figures do not include the states that run their own marketplaces, which will be reported in March.

Last year, the combined total of healthcare.gov and state marketplaces was about 12.7 million.

Local numbers are not yet available. In 2016, there were 17,407 enrollees from Lancaster County, compared to 17,754 in 2015.

The overall 2017 drop for healthcare.gov followed an early surge of interest that saw 8.8 million people sign up by the end of December, compared to 8.6 million by that time for 2016.

The future of the Affordable Care Act remains uncertain, with President Donald Trump telling CNN in an interview broadcast Sunday that plans to replace it could take until 2018.

"I would like to say by the end of the year, at least the rudiments, but we should have something within the year and the following year," he said.

Credit: Staff