With late surge, Texas Obamacare enrollment nearly matches 2016
In
A total of 1.13 million Texans signed up for insurance on the federal exchange during this year's 45-day period, coming in 8 percent below last year's total of about 1.23 million, when open enrollment lasted three months.
The numbers still could climb, because people affected by this year's hurricanes have been given extra time to sign up. In addition, the numbers don't include people who were in the process of enrolling before the deadline and had to leave call-back numbers because of high volume.
Nationally, total enrollment this year topped 8.8 million people, 4 percent below last year's total of about 9.2 million during the longer enrollment window. More than 4.1 million people signed up in the final week this year, according to the
"The fact that people still signed up, and really at a higher rate than in previous years, shows people want insurance and that (the Affordable Care Act) is their most viable way to get it,"
said
Open enrollment for 2018 insurance under the Affordable Care Act -- commonly known as Obamacare -- began
The figures released Thursday don't include people signing up in states that operate their own exchanges and that in many cases have longer open enrollment windows.
Ghahremani
, whose organization includes three insurers that offered health plans on the federal exchange this year, said all of them were surprised by the rates of enrollment they experienced -- given the negative rhetoric regarding the Affordable Care Act from Republican lawmakers who repeatedly tried to kill it.
"They are not seeing a huge decrease in their enrollment from last year, when the enrollment period was double," she said. "So that seems to indicate that people are still very interested in getting health insurance."
In addition to shortening the enrollment period this year, the Trump administration cut money for an annual federal campaign to promote it by 90 percent -- to
Funding for
The
"The story line has been very negative (from the Trump administration), so many people may not even be looking at what their options are,"
The individual mandate that requires everyone to have insurance or pay a penalty remains in place for 2018. But the Republican-led tax bill that passed in
"That will be the biggest destructive factor in the marketplace,"
Ghahremani
said. "Without other changes, that certainly will lead to the demise of the market. Insurance plans will increasingly have (only) the sickest individuals in their enrollment -- and the dreaded death spiral will happen" of skyrocketing premiums or insurers dropping out of the marketplace.
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