Signups through state’s Obamacare exchange hit all-time record this year

Feb. 02--More than 225,000 people statewide signed up for health care plans through Washington's online Health Benefit Exchange this year, a 13 percent increase over the last open enrollment period, officials reported Thursday.

This year's open enrollment period ran from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31. Just in the last week of January, more than 500,000 people logged onto the Healthplanfinder site, more than double the number of site visitors in the same period last year. Nearly 12,000 calls were made to the exchange's Customer Support Center in the final hours of Jan. 31, staff said.

Signups on the website are not the final tally of how many people actually got health coverage through the exchange; that number will come from the health plans themselves, which handle billing for customers directly. The Health Benefit Exchange won't have that data for several months.

In addition to the health plan signups, some 60,000 people signed up for dental plans, which were offered on the exchange for the first time this year.

In Yakima and Kittitas counties, Yakima Neighborhood Health Services is the lead agency for navigators who help people sign up through the exchange. As of Jan. 18, they had helped 1,115 customers sign up for health plans.

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