Last week, the Obama administration announce its intention to delay next year’s open enrollment period for individual insurance coverage from October 15, 2014 to November 15, 2014 with the closing date moving from December 7, 2014 to January 15, 2015. Although the change moves the beginning date past the 2014 elections, the administration denied any political motivation, rather saying that insurers needed more time to evaluate results from 2014 before proposing plans and premiums for the coming year. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the proposed date changes along with a number of other rule revisions.
As is always the case with proposed regulations, the HHS document solicits comments on the revisions. In this case, the window for comments is 30 days from the date the changes are posted in the Federal Register. However, despite the comment solicitation period, HHS already revised the dates advertised to consumers at Healthcare.gov. As recently as November 20, the old dates were listed [cached page]:
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However, the same page now reads as follows:
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There is no indication anywhere on the page when the information was revised, or even that it was revised at all. The change was made in one other place on the website as well. THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported a similar revision back in September when a reference to “free health care” was removed from the site. After the article ran, the director of media relations for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at the time, Brian Cook, contacted us to “insist” that the article be updated to note that the change was simply made “as part of its routine changes” to the site. Mr. Cook did not respond to further inquires about how such routine changes come about and why changes are not notated.
The change in the open enrollment dates does not only affect coverage obtained through a state- or federally-run Obamacare website. The enrollment window applies to individual plans purchased outside of the exchanges as well, as noted on Healthcare.gov:
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The restriction on enrollment even in non-Exchange plans is intended to prevent consumers from waiting for an illness before signing up for coverage. Special enrollment periods are available based on certain “life events,” but getting sick is not one of the qualifying events. This means anyone who does not obtain individual coverage by March 31, 2014 will have to wait an extra month untilNovember 15, 2014 to be eligible to enroll in any individual health insurance plan regardless of the source.
