About 3.6 million plans have been selected on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance exchanges through Dec. 2, outpacing the 600,000 selections at this time in 2016. With the open enrollment period lasting 45 days instead of 90, however, it’s looking likely the final numbers will fall short of previous years.
CMS said 823,000 plans were selected between Nov. 26 and Dec. 2 in the 39 states that use the Healthcare.gov platform, with those applications covering more than 1.1 million people. That’s up from 504,000 plan selection in the previous week.
The deadline to select plans is Dec. 15 and while a last-minute surge in enrollment is typical for the exchanges, analysts said matching the nine million people who signed up for 2017 coverage appears very unlikely.
“It seems pretty clear at this point that the combination of a shorter sign-up period and massive reductions in outreach will lead to lower enrollment and more people uninsured,” Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Business Insider.
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John joined TriMed in 2016, focusing on healthcare policy and regulation. After graduating from Columbia College Chicago, he worked at FM News Chicago and Rivet News Radio, and worked on the state government and politics beat for the Illinois Radio Network. Outside of work, you may find him adding to his never-ending graphic novel collection.