USA health officials said they expect 10 million people to be enrolled in healthcare plans through state-based insurance exchanges by the end of 2016, with more than one-quarter of eligible uninsured Americans signing up during this fall’s open enrollment period.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced Thursday that, by late 2016, an anticipated 10 million Americans will have health plans in effect through the state and federal insurance exchanges created under the law.
The open enrollment projection is also far below the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s projection of about 20 million people. But she called 10 million “a strong and realistic goal”. An aide said the congressional numbers are based in part on assumptions that haven’t panned out about employers dropping job-based plans for their workers, and about people with their own private coverage switching to HealthCare.gov. But things seem to be changing.
But many people – an estimated 32.3 million, including about 2.7 million in Florida – remained uninsured in early 2015, about half of whom are eligible for Medicaid or for financial aid to buy a plan on the exchanges, according to a recent report from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. They may not see the value in getting health insurance, even if it is now required by law and penalties for being uninsured are rising. Its authors expected that about half of the people who gained coverage would buy health plans through the new exchanges, while the rest would be people with low or moderate incomes who became eligible for Medicaid under more generous, nationwide eligibility rules for that program. The new sign-up season starts November 1.
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Progress on the law’s Medicaid expansion has also stalled.
