The first big Affordable Care Act 2015 open enrollment deadline is here and this time it looks like it won’t be a bust.
The federal HealthCare.gov website and state sites seem to be working well enough to get people enrolled or re-enrolled by midnight Monday if they want coverage to be effective on Jan. 1. The final deadline for enrollment for coverage in 2015 — and to avoid penalties at tax time in 2016 for not having insurance — is Feb. 15.
“It’s like a night-and-day different experience from where it was at start of open enrollment last year,” says Anne Filipic, president of Enroll America, a non-profit grassroots organization trying to get people to sign up.
For example, nearly 1.4 million people selected plans in the first three weeks of open enrollment this year and only 1.2 million did so in the first three months last year, Filipic notes.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that open enrollment was going much better than last year’s technically plagued rollout, though he acknowledged that is “certainly a low bar.”
“We are very pleased that the website has performed so well in the open enrollment period,” he said.
The Obama administration is encouraging those who signed up on the exchanges last year to go back and revisit their policies this year, projecting that about 70% of people could find a cheaper policy.That’s because there are new insurers and plans on most exchanges.
HealthCare.gov, which is handling enrollment for 37 states, was overhauled so it could handle the traffic without crashing or otherwise malfunctioning.
There are still some glitches. Mary Carstens of Omaha spent days trying to log back into her account on HealthCare.gov to make sure she had successfully enrolled. Even several call center workers couldn’t help. But she eventually was able to get in and confirm she was indeed signed up.
“We are now enrolled and are very happy with the coverage and price we were able to obtain,” she says. “It was much easier to sign up than I expected.”
Officials in states with their own exchanges say thousands of their residents have successfully applied for health coverage in qualified plans so far.
• California: About 49,000 people selected plans, and more than 81,000 were determined eligible for plans through Dec. 3, but hadn’t yet selected one. “The pace of enrollment is strong, at rates far exceeding those we saw last year,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California. The state expanded computer capacity and increased the number of customer service representatives to deal with the expected rush as the Feb. 15 deadline approaches.
• Kentucky: More than 116,000 residents have conducted preliminary screenings, and 15,140 have either newly enrolled or renewed their enrollment in a qualified health plan. Officials sent letters to about 80,000 people who bought such plans last year, detailing new premiums and subsidies. As is the case elsewhere, if they don’t do anything, they will automatically be enrolled in the same plans as last year.
• Minnesota: Officials of the state exchange, MNsure, are calling, e-mailing and sending postcards to state residents who are in plans that won’t be offered anymore for 2015. About 23,000 policyholders in the state will be affected by the departure of insurer PreferredOne from the state’s exchange. These people wouldn’t be eligible for tax credits if they renewed their current coverage off the exchange and would face average premium increase of 168%, MNsure says.
States and groups, including Enroll America, have been doing a big get-out-the-vote style campaign to reach people who may have missed all the publicity surrounding open enrollment last year.
The message is starting to spread more quickly, Filipic says.
“We’re seeing the beginning of a ripple effect that we’ve been expecting for a while,” she says. “There was a surge at the end of open enrollment last year, and based on human behavior, I think we’ll see something similar this year.”
Date: December 14, 2014