There's just a few weeks left in the open enrollment period for Obamacare—it closes February 15. And with two weeks to go, enrollments are very likely
to surpass administration expectations.
The Obama administration said Tuesday that 9.5 million people had signed up to receive health coverage through public marketplaces in 2015, with less than a month to go before the enrollment deadline.
At first glance, the report suggests that the administration has achieved its goal of having 9.1 million people enrolled at the end of this year. But in 2014, more than 15 percent of people who selected health plans in the public marketplaces failed to pay their share of premiums and were therefore not on the rolls at the end of the year. Officials said they thought that similar attrition could occur this year.
That includes more than 7.1 million who signed up or were re-enrolled in plans on the federal exchange and 2.4 million in the separate state exchanges. More than a quarter of those signing up are in that desirable demographic, 18 to 34 years old. And 87 percent of these enrollees qualify for federal subsidies. Or at least they do for now. We'll see after the Supreme Court rules later this year on whether subsidies should be available to people buying on the federal exchange.
As usual, the government's figures are more conservative than Charles Gaba's, who generally ends up being pretty darned accurate. Either way, 2015 enrollments are on track to be a big success, because we can expect to see a large rush of sign-ups in the last few weeks of the enrollment period.