ACA enrollment up in first weeks—and if it falls, poll says Trump will be blamed

Between Nov. 1 and Nov. 11, nearly 1.5 million people signed up for health insurance coverage on the Healthcare.gov exchange, an increase of almost 500,000 from the same period last year.

This follows record signups reported by CMS in the first four days of the open enrollment period. In all, more than 1.1 million people have renewed their coverage while another 345,000 new customers have also selected coverage for 2018, with more than 2.9 million consumers covered on those applications.

A key difference in this year’s open enrollment period, however, is its length—it will end on Dec. 15, rather than stretch until end of January, meaning a third of the period has already elapsed. As Avalere’s senior vice president of policy and strategy, Caroline Pearson, told Axios, the more accurate comparison for enrollment would be how many signups were made a third of the way into the 2016 period—which was 2.1 million people, meaning this year’s open enrollment is lagging behind. In order to match 2016 enrollment numbers, twice as many people would to sign up each week.

Enrollment is expected to drop by as much as 13 percent thanks to the shortened open enrollment period and reduced funding for outreach and advertising for the exchanges under the Trump administration.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found most people haven’t heard about open enrollment, with 61 percent reporting hearing “a little” or nothing at all about it. 45 percent of all respondents and 52 percent of the uninsured said they’ve heard less about ACA enrollment this year than in prior years under the Obama administration.

Awareness was the same regardless of a respondent’s political leanings. The same couldn’t be said for who would be to blame if enrollment is down for 2018.

Overall, 50 percent said if fewer people sign up, it’s because the Trump administration “took actions to weaken the program,” while 37 percent said it would be because the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress “designed a flawed program.” Some 78 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of independents put the blame on Trump, while 73 percent of Republicans said it would be Obama and Democrats’ fault if enrollment decreased.

Partisan leanings also affected polling results regarding other healthcare policies. Republicans largely had negative reactions to terms like “Medicare-for-all,” “universal health coverage” and “national health plan,” while Democrats and, to a lesser degree, independents reacted positively.

One proposal seemed to bring them together: a Medicare buy-in option. Four in five of Democrats (80 percent), 73 percent of independents and 62 percent of Republicans favored allowing some people the option to buy insurance through Medicare—with even greater support among respondents between the ages of 50 and 64.