Jan. 4, 2019
Dive Brief:
- More than 8.4 million Americans enrolled for
healthcare coverage through the federal ACA exchanges in 2018, down
roughly 4% from 2017, according to final figures released
Thursday by CMS.
- This is
also a small decrease from CMS' preliminary tally of
almost 8.5 million people following the end of open enrollment Dec. 15 on
Healthcare.gov.
- CMS attributed the decrease to
cancellations once all new plan selections, renewals and automatic
enrollments were taken into account. CMS will release additional data in
March that includes plan selection data from separate state-based
exchanges.
Dive
Insight:
According
to the final figures, 2 million new consumers enrolled through the federal
exchanges for 2019 coverage, while about 6.4 million renewed their previous
coverage.
Though
CMS Administrator Seema Verma crowed that the exchanges were steady in
December, chalking up the decrease in participants to low unemployment, some
experts say the Trump administration is partially to blame.
The
administration has not been shy in its disdain for the law, with even Verma
tweeting that the ACA is a disaster.
#Obamacare is devastating
families across the country. Honored to hear just a few of these stories with @VP at the @WhiteHouse today.
Policy-wise,
CMS has slashed the open enrollment period in half for the past two years, cut
advertising for the ACA exchanges and sharply decreased funding to groups
created to help consumers navigate plan selection.
Of
the 39 states using the Healthcare.gov platform, Florida had the highest
bandwidth with 1.8 million enrollees followed by Texas (1.1 million) and North
Carolina (501,000).
Seven
of the 11 states with their own exchanges remain open for enrollment. Citizens
of Minnesota have until Jan. 13 while people who live in California, Colorado,
Connecticut and the District of Columbia can apply until Jan. 15. Those
residing in Massachusetts and New York have until Jan. 23 and Jan. 31,
respectively.
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